
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No. 

Shelt...f:V'''^' 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



^tP 10 1898 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/problemsofphilos01hibb 



THE PROBLEMS OF 
PHILOSOPHY 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR, 
— ♦— 

INDUCTIVE LOGIC. l2mo . . o o $1.50 



THE PROBLEMS OF 
PHILOSOPHY 



AN INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY 
OF PHILOSOPHY 



BY 



JOHN GRIER HIBBEN, Ph.D. 

STUART PROFESSOR OF LOGIC IN PRINCETON 
UNIVERSITY 



NE# YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1898 






\ 



13981 



COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY ll ^ cONGREM' 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONSll — - 

WASHIS^TC^ 



4e:n 




TWO COPIES RECEIVED. 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Bersirick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



189o. 



PREFACE 

It has been my aim in this work to 
give a simple statement of the various 
schools of philosophy, with the salient 
features of their teachings, and to indicate 
the chief points at issue in reference to 
controverted questions. There has been 
no attempt to present a detailed account 
or exhaustive criticism of philosophical 
systems ; but merely to furnish the stu- 
dent who is beginning the study of phi- 
losophy a bird's-eye view of the general 
philosophical territory. It is my earnest 
hope that from these cursory glimpses he 
may be led to a more extended and seri- 
ous exploration. 

One who is undertaking for the first 
time a course in the history of philosophy 
finds himself naturally at a loss to under- 



VI PREFACE 

stand the relations between earlier and 
later periods of thought, and therefore 
wants a proper perspective ; accordingly 
he fails to appreciate the drift of things. 
To all such an introduction to the main 
problems, and general tendencies of phil- 
osophical discussion, should prove an 
invaluable assistance in interpreting the 
evolution of thought historically. 

I have tried to define the many techni- 
cal terms in such a manner as to acquaint 
the reader with the language of philoso- 
phy, and yet at the same time to avoid 
the use of such terms as far as possible 
in explaining the distinctive doctrines of 
the different philosophical schools. 

J. G. H. 

Redfield, New York, 
August 8, 1898. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. A Plea for Philosophy . . 1 

II. The Problems of Philosophy . 14 

III. The Problem of Being (" Ontol- 
ogy") 32 

ly. The World Problem (" Cosmol- 
ogy") 69 

V. The Problem of Mind (" Psy- 
chology") .... o 78 

yi. The Problem of Knowledge 

(" Epistemology ") ... 95 

yil. The Problem of Eeason (" Logic ") 118 

yill. The Problem of Conscience 

(" Ethics ") 134 

IX. The Problem of Political Obli- 
gation (" Political Science ") . 158 

X. The Problem of the Sense of 

Beauty (''^Esthetics ") . . 181 

Index 199 

vii 



THE 
PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

CHAPTER I 

A PLEA FOR PHILOSOPHY 

THERE is in the minds of some, per- 
haps of many, a false conception of 
philosophy. The popular verdict would 
agree no doubt with Keats : — 

" Do not all charms fly 
At the mere touch of cold philosophy." 

From the days when Socrates, to the 
delight of the Athenian audience, was 
exposed to the good-natured banter of 
Aristophanes, the philosopher has ever 
been regarded as a visionary creature, 
essentially unpractical in his point of 
view, repudiating common-sense judg- 
ments, his head in the clouds, his feet 
spurning the earth. 



2 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

When Thales fell into a well, as he 
walked and gazed at the stars, a witty 
Thracian maiden remarked that he was 
so eager to know what was going on in 
heaven, that he could not see what was 
before his feet. And it is true that many 
have followed in Thales' footsteps. 

Even a more thoughtful reflection may 
still leave the impression that the phi- 
losopher, after long years of patient intro- 
spection and persevering research, fails 
at last to contribute permanently to the 
world's thought, or materially to further 
its progress. The scientist, the inventor, 
the statesman, the man of affairs, leave 
behind them visible and tangible results 
which make for prosperity, and health, 
and a more abounding life. But of phi- 
losophy, it is urged, in the words of Bacon, 
that "like a virgin consecrated to God, 
she bears no fruit." Even among those 
who would not assent wholly to this 
stricture upon philosophy, there still 
lingers the feeling that there is grave 
danger lest philosophic inquiry degener- 
ate into barren disputation. No one 



A PLEA FOR PHILOSOPHY 3 

could have had a higher ideal of the 
offices of a true philosopher than Lotze, 
and yet this same feeling was ho doubt in 
his mind when he said: "The continual 
sharpening of the knife becomes tiresome if, 
after all, we have nothing to cut with it." 
A philosopher, however, is not fairly- 
judged by his eccentricities, nor by the 
frailties to which he is liable; still less 
should his philosophy as a whole fall into 
ill-repute because of those among its 
devotees who have stumbled into wells, 
or who aimlessly pass their lives in 
whetting their faculties and then neg- 
lecting to use them. The problems of 
philosophy are, in fact, the problems 
of life, the burden and the mystery of 
existence, the origin and destiny of 
man, the relations which he sustains to 
the world of which he is a part, and to 
the unseen universe which lies round 
about him. Though they may not be 
couched in philosophical language, such 
questionings of heart and of mind we 
cannot wholly silence. For, when we 
are most deeply engrossed in the every- 



4 THE PKOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

day round of work and worry, and when 
the problems of life seem to narrow 
down to the problem of the ways and 
means of bare existence, then, — 

" There's a sunset-touch 
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death 
A chorus-ending from Euripides, — 
And that's enough for fifty hopes, and fears 
As old and new at once as Nature's self." 

In the face of the good-natured gibe or 
the ill-natured sneer, man is a philoso- 
pher in spite of himself. It must be al- 
lowed, nevertheless, that while there is 
a philosophy which is spontaneous, vital, 
and productive, there is also a philosophy 
which is inert and barren. Much that 
is called discussion is a mere raising of 
the dust which obscures the vision and 
irritates the disposition. Goethe, him- 
self a philosopher as well as a poet, has 
quite roundly abused a speculative spirit 
of this kind in the sneer of Mephis- 
topheles : — 

"Ich sag' es dir ; ein Kerl der speculirt, 
1st wie ein Thier, auf diirrer Heide 
Von einem bosen Geist im Kreis gefiihrt 
Und rings umher liegt schone griine Weide." 



A PLEA FOR PHILOSOPHY 5 

And yet Goethe would have been the 
first to defend that sort of speculation 
which is characterized by an open mind, 
an earnest spirit of inquiry, and a love of 
the truth which draws living water from 
the deep springs of reality. 

Plato describes philosophers as lovers 
of the truth, of that which is, — impas- 
sioned lovers. This is the most satisfac- 
tory as well as the simplest definition of 
the philosopher. He is a lover of that 
which 2S, in distinction from that which 
seems to be. He seeks a reason for the 
phenomena of existence; he is not satis- 
fied with a mere description of their mode 
of behavior, or with a mere formulation 
of the laws which express the causal re- 
lation of these phenomena. The prob- 
lem of philosophy differs from the problem 
of science. It is the problem of science, 
as John Stuart Mill puts it, " to discover 
what are the fewest number of phenomenal 
data which, being granted, will explain 
the phenomena of experience." Philoso- 
phy probes deeper. It seeks to reveal also 
the raison d'etre of these fundamental 



6 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

data, and their relation to the thinking 
self which observes them, and reasons 
about them, as well as their relation to 
the power which constitutes and directs 
their elemental energy. The philosopher 
should be the "synoptic" man, one who 
sees the verities of life in their true rela- 
tions, properly coordinated or subordi- 
nated, and who, in particular pursuits, 
however absorbing, does not ignore the 
unity of the whole, nor overlook the uni- 
versal aspect even of the commonplaces of 
life. 

The philosopher and poet here meet on 
common ground. Each strives to appre- 
hend the reality which underlies appear- 
ance, to discover the "open secret of the 
world." To appreciate the wealth of 
philosophy's contribution to the thought 
of humanity, we must not forget that, 
shorn of their technical terminology, and 
translated into the living words and 
flaming symbols of poetry, philosophical 
ideas have appealed to innumerable minds 
for whom formal philosophy must have 
remained forever a sealed book. The 



A PLEA FOR PHILOSOPHY 7 

poet naturally commands a larger audi- 
ence than the philosopher, because of the 
form in which he casts his thought, and, 
yet, he is truly a philosopher, — so far as 
he is a true poet, meditating upon the 
deep things of God, and hymning his 
song "on man, on nature, and on human 
life." The poet, as well as the philoso- 
pher, sees in the world in which he lives 
far more than the fleeting panorama of 
events, and the surface show of things. 
We may take the closing lines of Kip- 
ling's "L'Envoi," as a just expression of 
the ideal of the poet's life and work : — 

"And only the Master shall praise us, and only the 

Master shall blame ; 
And no one shall work for money, and no one 

shall work for fame; 
But each for the joy of the working, and each in 

his separate star. 
Shall draw the thing as he sees it for the God of 

things as they are.'' 

Deprive poetry of this which it has in 
common with philosophy, — the seeing of 
things as they are, — and the beauty and 
fragrance of the flower are gone. The 



8 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

blending of philosophy and poetry appears 
in consummate excellence in Tennyson's 
"In Memoriam." The following quota- 
tion from Tennyson's biography will serve 
to illustrate this somewhat at length: — 

"Men like Maurice and Robertson 
thought that the author of ' In Memo- 
riam ' had made a definite step towards 
the unification of the highest religion and 
philosophy with the progressive science 
of the day ; and that he was the one poet 
who, 'through almost the agonies of a 
death-struggle,' had made an effective 
stand against his own doubts and diffi- 
culties, and those of the time 'on behalf 
of those first principles which underlie 
all creeds, which belong to our earliest 
childhood, and on which the wisest and 
best have rested through all ages.' "^ It 
is this all-embracing vision which consti- 
tutes the poetic insight, and the philo- 
sophic insight as well. Though the poet 
may experience less sombre moods than 
those which seem to bring him to the 

1 Vol. I, p. 298. 



A PLEA FOR PHILOSOPHY 9 

"agonies of a deatli-struggle " and may 
strike his lyre with lighter touch, still, 
his deeper themes are no less susceptible 
of a harmonious expression, and the 
chords of his thought stir and soothe as 
the more joyous strains cannot do. Poetry 
is but one of the many channels through 
which the flow of philosophical ideas has 
sensibly swelled the world's store of sen- 
timent and of knowledge. The standards 
of every age, individual, social, and politi- 
cal, have been modified to a greater or 
less extent by the influence of philosophi- 
cal discussion. The doctrines of the 
schools become at last the maxims of the 
crowd. The eighteenth century philoso- 
phers cannot wash their hands of the blood 
of the French Revolution. Those essen- 
tial principles of Protestantism which 
gave rise to civil as well as religious lib- 
erty, struck their roots deep in the soil of 
a religious philosophy. In Germany 
philosophical enlightenment gave stim- 
ulus to political life, and created a lit- 
erature. Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and 
Hegel claim spiritual kinship with Her- 



10 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

der, Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing. In 
England, we see that Gladstone, Morley, 
and Balfour have given serious thought 
to the problems of philosophy in the midst 
of pressing burdens of state, and the per- 
plexities of public policy. 

Philosophy, after all, is no dry-as-dust 
'Study. It is not a firing without aim 
and without projectile. Its problems 
are practical questions of the day. They 
are questions of every day, — of all time. 

The true philosopher is a brave spirit; 
dauntless to discover, and bold to declare 
the truth at all hazard. He feels the 
inner constraint of his messages, and, as 
a prophet to his day and generation, he 
must needs speak, though the whole world 
cry to him, silence. With singleness 
of purpose he would cheerfully sacrifice 
place, friends, church, country, for the 
sake of truth. The philosopher's pur- 
suits, moreover, have always stood as a 
tacit protest against the debasing influ- 
ences of the materialistic tendencies of 
life, the greed of Mammon, and the dead- 
ening spell of utilitarian ideals ; for amidst 



A PLEA FOR PHILOSOPHY 11 

the levelling forces in the struggle for 
existence, the philosopher points to a 
higher ideal, and himself leads the way. 
He is a prophet as well as a schoolman. 
He has a mission to fulfil, as well as a 
theory to propound. He is under con- 
straint to utter a message, as well as to 
acquire knowledge and to solve the per- 
plexities of his own mind. The philoso- 
pher, nevertheless, is not always a poet 
or a prophet. He may be a man whose 
special calling seems to remove him very 
far from the sphere of philosophj^-, and may 
yet be a philosopher. A man's life, for 
example, may be devoted exclusively to 
the exacting demands of the legal pro- 
fession, his thoughts absorbed in the weary 
round of law decisions and precedents, 
and theory may seemingly be of small 
concern to him, except so far as it may 
illumine practice; and yet he does not 
wholly ignore the philosophy of law. He 
must be conversant with the problems 
respecting the fundamental principles 
underlying equity and justice. The stu- 
dent of history pushes his research for 



12 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

facts with untiring perseverance, and yet 
the result of his labor is not a mere 
bundle of facts. It is such a grouping of 
consecutive events as shall reveal the 
whole, of which the separate facts are 
logically related parts. Thence it is but 
a step to a philosophy of history, and this 
step the historian is constrained to take. 
And so throughout the various spheres of 
life we find philosophical questions always 
emerging, — a philosophy of conduct, a 
philosophy of nature, a philosophy of art. 
Of life itself there must be a philosophy. 
We therefore conclude that not to a 
special class, and that a restricted one, 
must the problems of philosophy be rele- 
gated. Those problems are a common 
heritage. He who ignores them despises 
his own birthright. To acquaint oneself 
with the questions which, in the various 
forms of statement, every generation from 
time immemorial has been forced to face, 
is not a privilege merely, it is a duty as 
well. If it is imperative that man should 
know the significant events of the world's 
history, it is equally imperative that he 



A PLEA FOR PHILOSOPHY 13 

should be informed concerning the notable 
movements and epochs in the history of 
the world's thought, at any rate, so far as 
such history touches upon the verities of 
human existence and human welfare. A 
history of philosophy which records the 
achievements of man in the field of mind, 
discloses the same effort, the same strug- 
gle and conflict, hope and despair, victory 
and defeat, which characterize the more 
material and conspicuous deeds of history. 
The rise and fall of philosophies parallel 
the rise and fall of nations. The fortunes 
of philosophy have also their great motives, 
their heroes, their tragedies even. There 
is here, also, onward movement, the 
mighty sweep of a progressive develop- 
ment, whose end is the knowledge of the 
truth. 



CHAPTER II 

THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

WE have seen that philosophy is 
concerned with that which is, in 
contrast with that which seems to be. Its 
aim is to reveal the reality which under- 
lies appearance. Its problem, therefore, 
is to discover the nature of reality, its 
various modes of manifestation, and their 
relations one to another. But what is 
reality ? Is it not merely a term for the 
philosopher to conjure with, behind which 
he may craftily conceal his ignorance? 
For the philosopher may prate about 
truth, and reality, and the eternal veri- 
ties, and what not. ^ButT^ do his words 
stand for clear intelligible ideas which 
the plain man can understand and appre- 
ciate? Let us examine more closely the 
significance of this vague word, reality. 
It may have several meanings, according 
to the different points of view which one 

14 



THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 15 

takes. We may regard it as embodied 
in the physical world, the world of land 
and sea, of sky and trees, of sunshine and 
of storm. The real therefore will be to 
us that which we can touch and see, smell 
and taste, as one will say, " I know that 
is real for I can see it with my eyes." 
Seeing is believing, and the testimony of 
the senses is the superior court of appeal 
in controverted questions. But the 
world of reality may be regarded from 
quite a different point of view, as the 
world of consciousness, the mind of man, 
the experiences of the inner self, the Ego. 
Here is a world of phenomena interre- 
lated and reciprocally dependent. It is 
a realm of ideas, of memory images, of 
fancy, of will, and of desire. The veri- 
ties in this world cannot be seen, or 
measured, or weighed, and yet we do not 
hesitate to speak of them as realities; 
they are real as the love of friends is 
real, or the anger of a foe. The passion 
of a Romeo, the will of a Napoleon, the 
genius of a Goethe, the conception of a 
united fatherland in the fancy of a Bis- 



16 THE PROBLEMS OP PHILOSOPHY 

marck, these are realities. A deeper sig- 
nificance of the real, and still further 
removed from the sphere of sense-percep- 
tion is that of the reality wh'ch lies behind 
the world of sight and of sound, of thought 
and of desire, the real as eternal, "the 
hidden purpose of that Power which alone 
is great, and the myriad world His 
shadow." To some it may seem that we 
have here undertaken an excursion into 
the territory of the unreal; to others, 
however, such an idea appeals as the verity 
of verities. 

The subject matter of philosophy, " that 
which is," that sphere of reality which 
seemed at first so obscurely outlined, we 
have found to comprise three definite 
divisions, nature, mind, and God. It 
is the province of philosophy not merely 
to consider reality under each one of 
these aspects separately, but also to 
consider the relations which obtain be- 
tween them, that is, the relation between 
the world and man, between man and 
God, and between God and the world. 
Various lines of inquiry are thus sug- 



THE PKOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 17 

gested which serve to outline the separate 
spheres, and general scope of the various 
branches of philosophy, and to define the 
nature and manner of their reciprocal re- 
lations. Such a bird's-eye view of the 
territory of philosophy is called a philo- 
sophical encyclopaedia. 

That portion of the philosophical ter- 
ritory which we will first consider, is 
metaphysics. This is a term used origi- 
nally by Aristotle to designate that part 
of his philosophy which came after (/ieVa) 
his physics. It has come, however, to 
mean an inquiry which differs essen- 
tially from a physical mode of investi- 
gation. Physical research is connected 
with phenomena, their nature, description, 
and measurement, leading to the discov- 
ery and formulation of the laws of their 
behavior. Metaphysical investigation at- 
tempts to explain the fundamental nature 
of that which underlies phenomenal ap- 
pearance, and constitutes its primary 
essence. Metaphysics goes behind the 
results of physics, seeking their deeper 
significance. There is, moreover, a sec- 



18 THE PKOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

ond point of difference: metaphysics not 
only sees deeper, but with a more extended 
vision. For, while physics deals prima- 
rily with special problems such as elec- 
tricity, magnetism, or heat, metaphysics, 
with a broad sweep of inquiry, puts the 
question as to the nature of being in 
general, and not any particular manifes- 
tation of it. Metaphysics is generally 
regarded as restricted in its scope to two 
special lines of inquiry: First, what is 
the nature of being in general? This is 
the problem of ontology. Second, what 
is the origin of the universe? Tliis is 
the problem of cosmology. 

In the problem of ontology we are 
confronted at once by an idea which is 
enveloped in the mists of indefiniteness. 
Being is so vague a term that it may 
mean anything or nothing. When a 
physical problem is presented for inves- 
tigation, as, for example, the nature of 
electricity, the task before us is specific 
and definite ; we know the problem that is 
set us even though we may despair of an 
adequate solution. But the question as 



■% 



THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 19 

to the nature of being presents evident 
difficulties; for how can we solve the 
problem when its very statement either 
conveys no meaning to our minds or so 
indefinite a one as to preclude any spe- 
cific method of inquiry? However, the 
indefinite problem as to the nature of 
being has been narrowed, in metaphysical 
discussion, to quite a definite question : 
Are the phenomena of the universe 
through all possible phases of their 
manifestation, at the last anxilysis, of a 
material nature or of a spiritual, or are 
they of both a material and a spiritual 
nature? Is mind or matter at the basis 
of all things ? The different theories ad- 
vanced in answer to this question, the 
endless discussions and disputes, the 
philosophical schools which in conse- 
quence have arisen, all lie in the sphere 
of ontology, or the science of being. 

In the proffered solutions of the prob- 
lem of ontology, two tendencies may be 
indicated, one towards monism, the other 
towards dualism. Monism recognizes 
but one kind of being: It is either ma- 



20 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

terialism, which reduces all psychical 
phenomena to a physical basis, that is, 
mind is regarded as a manifestation of 
matter, and thought, feeling, and will as 
merely brain products; or, we may have 
spiritualism, which explains - everything 
material as the manifestation of a force 
which is psychical in its origin and nat- 
ure, the world being regarded as a shadow 
world in which spirit embodies itself in 
outer forms which are merely the ghosts 
of reality. In one case mind is inter- 
preted in terms of matter, and in the 
other, matter in terms of mind. Dual- 
ism, however, holds that there are two 
kinds of being, matter and mind, separate 
and distinct, yet capable of mutual inter- 
action; and insists that there is a real 
world of mind and that there is a real 
world of matter. 

The second distinctly metaphysical 
problem is that of cosmology, or the 
science of the world; not as to the 
nature of the world and its phenomena, 
for that would be the problem of on- 
tology, but as to the origin of the world. 



THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 21 

quite irrespective of the question whether 
the world is all matter, or all mind, or 
partly matter and partly mind. The 
world may be explained mechanically, 
that is, any given phenomenon may be 
accounted for by referring it to its ap- 
propriate cause. Those who are satis- 
fied with the explanation of the universe 
as an endless chain, or to use a more 
adequate simile, a network of intimately 
related causes and effects, are content 
to rest the case here. Concerning the 
supreme Being behind phenomena, they 
are either agnostics or atheists. The 
former say we know not whether there 
be a God; the latter say, we know there 
is no God. 

In addition to the mechanical explana- 
tion of the universe, it is urged that there 
is a teleological explanation, that is, the 
discernment of an end (reXo^;^ or purpose 
in the midst of the mechanically related 
phenomena of existence. Thus the ques- 
tion of cosmology leads to the problem 
concerning the relation of God to the 
world. As to this relation there are 



22 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

various answers : polytheism, theism, 
deism, pantheism. Polytheism peoples 
the world with many gods, sometimes 
cooperating, sometimes in conflict, gods 
of one tribe warring with the god of a 
rival tribe. Deism, pantheism, and 
theism agree in affirming one only 
living and true God in opposition to 
polytheism. Deists believe in a God as 
creator of the universe, which, however, 
through the general laws and constitution 
of its elements, runs of itself without 
divine cooperation or intervention. Pan- 
theism regards the universe as the com- 
prehensive manifestation of God; God is 
everything, everything is God. Theism 
mediates between the tenets of deism, on 
the one hand, and those of pantheism, on 
the other, maintaining the proposition 
that God is distinct from the world, as 
opposed to pantheism, and yet operative 
in the world, as opposed to deism. 

These two branches, ontology and cos- 
mology, comprehend the problems of 
metaphysics. The term, metaphysics, 
however, is often used in a more general 



THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 23 

sense, as equivalent to all that transcends 
the physical methods of investigation and 
the mechanical point of view. The 
phrases, the metaphysics of ethics, the 
metaphysics of law, the metaphysics of 
art, indicate the wider use of the term. 

The special province, however, of 
metaphysics is that which has been out- 
lined above, as including ontology and 
cosmolog)^ 

Of the three aspects of reality, God, 
the world, and man, the study of man 
forms a separate branch of philosophy. 
And the term, man, as thus used, means 
mind, the 'y}rvxvi hence the name, psy- 
chology, or the study of the psychical 
part of man's nature. In psychology 
we find certain general questions as to 
the origin, nature, or development of 
mind, or consciousness. These questions 
lie within the sphere of psychology con- 
sidered as essentially a philosophical 
discipline. There are special problems, 
however, which require detailed investi- 
gation through observation and experi- 
ment. This is the field of experimental 



24 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

psychology, and constitutes a special sci- 
ence, closely related to and yet distinct 
from philosophical psychology. For in- 
stance, in the sphere of perception, philo- 
sophical questions emerge which relate to 
the theory of perception, the doctrine of 
its space and time conditions, to what 
extent the mind contributes to the process 
of perception, etc. Special psychology 
proceeds to investigate the phenomena of 
perception, to measure duration and in- 
tensity of the stimulus which produces 
the sensation. The tendency of modern 
research is to reduce psychology to a 
special experimental science, and to 
overlook the more general questions of 
a philosophical nature. 

In the province of mind we find cer- 
tain striking phenomena, a study of whose 
nature has given rise to much thought and 
to much discussion, and which has led 
to a special branch of philosophical in- 
quiry, known as epistemology, or the 
theory of knowledge. It is a study of 
mind under its central aspect, that of 
the knowing mind. There are here two 



THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 25 

questions of special interest and signifi- 
cance which suggest themselves. The 
first is, what is the relation of the self 
which knows to the world which is known. 
We found that the question of ontology 
and cosmology referred to the nature and 
mutual relations of God and the world. 
The problems of philosophical psychology 
relate to the nature and origin of the con- 
scious self. The question of episte- 
mology concerns the relation of self in 
one of its principal functions, the self as 
knowing, to the world which the self 
comes to know. The answers to this 
question give rise to two opposed philo- 
sophical schools, that of realism and that 
of idealism. The former hold that the 
world is distinct from the self, which is 
aware of it, and exists independently of 
the observing consciousness. The ideal- 
ist enters here a vigorous protest: ''Not 
so fast. All that I know, really know, 
is at the last analysis the idea which is 
wholly within the sphere of consciousness. 
An object I know onlj^- so far as I appre- 
hend the idea which constitutes my per- 



26 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

ception of it. The chair before my desk 
is present to my consciousness, viyid, 
clear, real; but I close my eyes, the chair 
vanishes. My consciousness of the chair 
is a mental fact, not a material thing. I 
know the mental fact, but what assurance 
have I that there is a material object cor- 
responding to the mental image of it?" 
Has the object an existence independent 
of the perceiving mind? The idealist 
says emphatically. No! The realist 
urges his affirmative convictions quite 
as emphatically, and so the time-honored 
discussion runs on from one generation of 
philosophers to another. 

There is still a second question as to 
the nature of knowledge, and this con- 
cerns its source. Does all our knowledge 
originate through experience, and espe- 
cially through the avenues of the senses, 
or is there something in the very constitu- 
tion of mind itself, which modifies the 
crude data of sense-perception, and thereby 
contributes, in the construction of our 
world of knowledge? Is there anything 
which I may know to be true without 



THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 27 

putting it to the trial of my senses, or to 
the test of experiment, such as measuring, 
weighing, or counting? Do I know, for 
instance, prior to all experience,. the truth 
of the proposition that the things which 
are equal to the same things are equal to 
each other, or must I prove it by actual 
experiment? Do I know, intuitively, 
that every event must have a cause, or 
does the conviction of this truth grad- 
ually dawn upon me with the widen- 
ing spheres of observation and inference? 
Here, again, we have, in answer to such 
questions, two schools of philosophy, 
that of empiricism and that of rational- 
ism. The empiricist insists that all 
knowledge is the outcome of experience, 
while the rationalist refers knowledge 
to the understanding as its primal 
source, whence arise necessary and uni- 
versally valid principles of thought, 
which are prior to any experience, and 
which also condition and modify experi- 
ence. The terms, a 'priori and a poste- 
riori^ are used to express this distinction, 
as regards knowledge which is before 



28 THE PKOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

and knowledge which is after experi- 
ence. 

There is still ■ another quarter of the 
philosophical territory, which comprises 
several distinct divisions which have 
as a common feature, that they inquire, 
not as to the nature of that which is, but 
of that which should be. Hence they are 
called normative; that is, they deal with 
a norm, or standard of being, which serves 
as an ideal according to which the phe- 
nomena in these several spheres are to be 
judged. There are three such disciplines : 
logic, which furnishes the norm of the 
true; ethics, the norm of the right or 
the good; and aesthetics, the norm of the 
beautiful. The first relates to the laws 
of reason; the second to an ideal of con- 
duct; the third to the canons of taste. 
Logic, ethics, and aesthetics correspond 
roughly to the three main divisions of the 
mind, the intellect, the will, and the 
feelings. 

The normative sciences differ from the 
others in that their judgments are judg- 
ments of valuation rather than of fact. 



THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 29 

Psychology deals with the actual phe- 
nomena of consciousness, their origin, 
their nature, their causes and effects. 
Psychology is not concerned with the 
worth of a mental experience ; right and 
wrong actions are accounted for indiffer- 
ently upon a strict basis of mental inter- 
pretation. Ethics, however, discriminates 
between radically different kinds of 
actions, which have a certain worth as 
tested by some definite standard of con- 
duct. In a like manner logic discrimi- 
nates between the true and the false, and 
aesthetics between the beautiful, the har- 
monious, and symmetrical, on the one 
hand, and, on the other, the ugly, the 
discordant, and the unsymmetrical. The 
relation between the normative and the 
factual sciences, however, is most inti- 
mate. That which is followed as an ideal 
will be visionary and misleading unless 
grounded upon a comprehensive knowl- 
edge of the practical limitations and 
possibilities which the facts of mind ne- 
cessitate. A study of the psychology of 
the reason must therefore precede the 



30 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

study of logic itself. The psychology of 
sensibility and of will must ground the 
theory of our moral consciousness. A 
fundamental knowledge of the emotions 
must precede an inquiry concerning the 
principles of esthetics. 

To resume, we have found that the 
ideas of the world, of man, and of God 
form the subject matter of the various 
.philosophical sciences. The most gen- 
eral problem, that of being, in its most 
comprehensive significance without re- 
garding its separate aspects of God, of 
man, and of the world, will lead us into 
the territory of ontology. The problem 
of the world and of the relation of the 
world to God, brings us into the neigh- 
boring province of cosmology. The 
problem of man, and by man is meant the 
mind in man, brings us into the field of 
philosophical psychology, and specializing 
in this territory as regards the relation of 
the knowing mind to the world, we reach 
the more restricted sphere of epistemol- 
ogy. Shifting our point of view to the 
guiding principles which operate as laws 



THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 31 

to our mental activities, and represent the 
ideal relations of the reasoning, willing, 
feeling man to the world, or to God, we 
find ourselves in the region of ethics, 
logic, and aesthetics. Such are the gen- 
eral features, roughly sketched, of the 
land which invites a more extended 
exploration. 



CHAPTER III 

THE PEOBLEM OF BEING (" ONTOLOGY ") 

THE problem of being, or ontology, is 
that department of philosophy which 
treats, in its most comprehensive signifi- 
cance, the fundamental nature of that 
which is. What is the common essence 
of all substances midst their varying 
forms of manifestation? We may com- 
pare a plant, a stone, an animal, a man, 
and ask the question. Is there a common 
element at the basis of all these particu- 
lar things from which the plant is fash- 
ioned after its kind, and the animal after 
its kind? 

There is an unexpressed philosophy in 
the solemn words, "ashes to ashes, and 
dust to dust," — a final reduction of all 
living forms to the inert mother of them 
all. But there is, on the other hand, a 
tendency to elevate matter into the sphere 

of mind, which is quite as pronounced as 

32 



THE PEOBLEM OF BEING 33 

the attempt to reduce all things *to matter. 
The problem of ontology, translated into 
popular phrase, is the much vexed ques- 
tion of the relations of mind and matter. 
The attempted solutions of this problem 
may be classified according to their ex- 
pression of any one of the following char- 
acteristics : 1. Pluralism ; 2. Dualism ; 
3. Monism. 

Pluralism, — Pluralism is a theory of 
the universe which recognizes several fun- 
damental elements of being, which may be 
regarded as analogous in their nature to 
the original elements of chemistry. They 
cannot be further reduced to simpler 
forms, nor derived from anything else, 
nor from each other. The earliest ex- 
pression of this theory is found in the 
atomism of Democritus. He insisted 
that the world was made up of innumer- 
able atoms, independent, self-existing bits 
of being, which could not be referred to 
a common source, and which gave no in- 
dication of possessing a common nature. 
Later in the history of philosophic thought 
we have another illustration of the plu- 



34 THE PKOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

ralistic point of view in the so-called 
monads of Leibniz. These were refined 
atoms; centres of force rather than cen- 
tres of matter and therefore at the last 
analysis of a psychical rather than a physi- 
cal nature. 

But even in these pluralistic explana- 
tions of being there is a tendency towards 
an indefinite sort of unity underlying the 
manifold differences. The teachings of 
Democritus imply a certain community 
of nature among his atoms, which were 
regarded as alike qualitatively though 
differing constitutionally in form and 
size, just as we say a rough block of 
marble and a statue are alike, j^et differ- 
ent. Leibniz's doctrine manifested a like 
tendency, inasmuch as he regarded all his 
monads as possessing two fundamental 
characteristics in common, namely, the 
elements of perceiving and of striving. 
We find, therefore, that beneath the many 
of Democritus there was a materialistic 
substratum, indicating a oneness of ori- 
gin, while beneath the many of Leibniz 
there was a psychical or soul basis as an 



THE PROBLEM OF BEING 35 

abiding unity in the midst of the indefi- 
nite variety of monads. 

Dualism, — If we imagine the tenden- 
cies in Democritus, and in Leibniz, as 
emerging at a common point, we will find 
the materialistic and spiritualistic concep- 
tions uniting in that explanation of the 
nature of being which is known as dual- 
ism. This explanation conceives being 
in general, as partly material and partly 
spiritual in its manifestation. The ex- 
pression of dualism is represented by the 
doctrines of Descartes, who is regarded as 
the father of modern philosophy. Accord- 
ing to hiiji the essence of matter is exten- 
sion, that is, the occupying of some portion 
of space, the spread-outedness of a body. 
The essence of mind, however, is thought. 
These two essences are radically distinct, 
the one, res extensa^ extended being, the 
other, res cogitans^ or thinking being. 
The theory of dualism further holds that 
the relation of extended matter to the 
thinking mind is one of mutual interac- 
tion. It is known as the "reaction" 
theory; at the presence of one form of 



36 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

being, as stimulus operating according to 
its proper mode of activity, the corre- 
sponding form of being reacts in response 
according to its own mode of manifesta- 
tion. There are many difficulties, how- 
ever, which are connected with this 
theory. All sensory stimulus is essen- 
tially motion, as is seen in the waves of 
sound vibrations which strike the ear, or 
the light waves impinging upon the 
retina. How, then, can that which is 
essentially motion influence or act upon 
that whose essence is thought? There is 
no common denominator here. 

No theory of cause and effect, as we 
understand cause, can explain the rela- 
tion between such disparate phenomena. 
There have been, however, several at- 
tempts to explain this difficulty, as Leib- 
niz's celebrated doctrine of preestablished 
harmony. Leibniz maintained that body 
and mind only seem to interact, but that 
there is no real connection between the 
two. The mind wills and an arm moves 
simultaneously, but the will does not 
move the arm. The thought-sphere is a 



THE PROBLEM OF BEING 37 

closed circle; so, also, the motor-sphere. 
They act, however, in unison according 
to a prearranged programme, — a preestab- 
lished harmony which a divine mind alone 
could conceive, establish, and execute. 
Another device to reconcile the difficul- 
ties in the case is that known as occasion- 
alism, a theory associated with the name 
of Geulincx, the most brilliant represent- 
ative of the Cartesian school. He held 
that God intervenes upon the occasion of 
every volition in order to stimulate the 
motor activity which the mind by itself 
is incapable of originating, and in like 
manner upon the occasion of every physi- 
cal stimulus, there is a similar interven- 
tion to produce a corresponding mental 
activity resulting in sensation and per- 
ception. 

Both of these views negative the free- 
dom of man. The power of human initia- 
tive is lost. Man becomes virtually an 
automaton in the loss of his individuality 
and responsibility. He is the harp of a 
thousand strings played upon by a divine 
hand, but not a man ! 



38 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Monism, — This is the theory of being 
which recognizes but one sort of essence 
in everything, however manifold may 
seem the variety of nature's manifesta- 
tions. There are three distinct forms of 
monism: — 

(a) Materialism, which regards mind 
as a form or product of matter. 

(b) Spiritualism, which regards matter 
as a form or product of mind, 

((?) The Identity theory, which regards 
matter and mind as different phases in the 
manifestation of one and the same being, 
which is itself neither matter nor mind. 

Materialism, — Materialism would re- 
duce all mental phenomena to simple 
effects or by-products of matter. This 
theory fortifies itself by the evident fact 
that there is no perception, no memorj^, 
no will, no emotion, without a correspond- 
ing modification of the brain tissue. The 
philosophical postulate of materialism is 
expressed in the epigrammatical propo- 
sition, "No psychosis without neurosis," 
i.e. it is impossible to have mind func- 
tion without brain function, no thought 



THE PEOBLEM OF BEING 39 

without an indispensable accompanying 
change in the cerebral centres. If you 
injure the brain, consciousness ceases 
wholly, or in part; or, at least, the normal 
functions are seriously deranged. Stimu- 
lants excite, anaesthetics benumb the 
sensibilities. In the light of these in- 
disputable facts many are led to the con- 
viction which is expressed in the words 
of the eminent French physician, Cabanis : 
"Thought is a function of the brain as 
digestion is a function of the stomach, 
and the secretion of bile the function of 
the liver." The tenets of materialism are 
nowhere more sententiously epitomized 
than in the gross pun of Feuerbach, one 
of the most pronounced of the German 
materialists : "Der Mensch ist was er isst," 
Man is (ist) what he eats (isst). 

The materialist claims that he holds an 
impregnable position in entrenching him- 
self behind the accepted doctrine of the 
conservation of energy, which precludes 
the possibility of there being any force in 
the universe which cannot be expressed in 
mechanical terms. For, as heat generates 



40 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

steam, and steam produces motion, and 
motion initiates an electric current which 
appears as transformed energy in the arc 
light or motor appliances, and yet through 
all these different manifestations there is 
only a transfer of energy from one form 
to another, no new energy being added, 
and none lost, so, also, the energy pro- 
duced by vibratory sound waves is trans- 
formed by impact upon the tympanum of 
the ear into a nerve disturbance, which, in 
turn, is transmitted by the sensory nerve 
channels to the brain, there producing an 
effect after its kind. The idea of a mani- 
festation other than material appearing at 
the end of a series of causally related phe- 
nomena, which, at the beginning and 
through all the intermediate stages, is 
essentially mechanical, does violence, the 
materialist would insist, to the fundamen- 
tal and universal laws of matter as ex- 
pressed in the doctrine of the conservation 
of energy. The materialists, therefore, 
in their line of defence maintain these 
two closely allied positions, the unbroken 
continuity of the physiological nerve-brain 



THE PEOBLEM OF BEING 41 

circuit, and the law of the conservation of 
energy; they insist that not only is there 
then no place, but also no necessity for 
any additional force which differs in kind 
from matter. 

There is still another doctrine, known 
as the parsimony of causes, to which the 
materialists appeal. The doctrine is, that 
when a known cause will adequately ac- 
count for any given effect, it is a work of 
supererogation to search for additional 
causes to explain the effect in question. 
Physical causes are all sufficient; why 
then waste time and thought in a fruitless 
quest beyond the sphere of the known and 
the material? 

We come now to consider some of the 
difficulties of the materialistic position 
which naturally suggest themselves. In 
the first place, their argument, based upon 
the doctrine of the conservation of energy, 
may be turned against themselves. It is 
in this respect a veritable two-edged 
sword, for inasmuch as at the beginning 
of the series and through all its sequences 
we have an unbroken line of mechanical 



42 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

causation, and yet tlie fact remains that 
the final term is manifestly of such a 
nature that between it and the other terms 
of the series there is no likeness, and no 
common factor, the conclusion seems ne- 
cessitated that this final term cannot be 
referred to a mechanical antecedent as its 
sole cause. It must be other than mate- 
rial, namely, that which we call psychical. 
With the same premises there are thus two 
conflicting inferences. Given a mechanical 
series ending in a psychical phenomenon, 
the materialist draws the inference, that 
the psychical phenomenon is not really 
such but only seems to be; that it is in 
reality purely physical, for the matrix 
from which it emerges is physical. The 
opposed view insists that the final term is 
so radically different in kind as to enjoin 
the materialist from attempting to corre- 
late the material and mental phenomena 
under one and the same law of universal 
causation. This latter view acknowledges 
that the mental and material are invari- 
ably found together, and yet contends 
that it is a gratuitous assumption to in- 



THE PKOBLEM OF BEING 43 

sist that they are connected as cause and 
effect. 

In any effect, moreover, there is always 
evidence of the energy which was present 
in the cause and was operative in produc- 
ing that effect. That energy may be, it 
is true, transformed to a great extent, but 
the form, however changed, will always 
readily show traces of a material origin, 
inasmuch as it will evidence itself in some 
one or other of the various manifestations 
of motion. In the phenomena of con- 
sciousness, however, in our thoughts, de- 
sires, volitions, we have no trace of a 
material origin. That which is thought or 
feeling cannot be translated into terms of 
matter and motion. Moreover, if the ma- 
terial energy has been transformed into 
psychical force, there is an evident loss of 
material energy as such. This, however, 
would contravene the doctrine of the 
conservation of energy which requires a 
constant amount of energy which cannot 
possibly sustain a loss, however insignifi- 
cant that loss may seem to be. The con- 
ception of an endless series of cause and 



44 THE PEOBLEIVIS OF PHILOSOPHY 

effect in which all phenomena of the uni- 
verse, without exception, are to be found, 
is a convenient and most comfortable 
theory. It simplifies the problems of ex- 
istence, and dismisses many perplexing 
questions. The phenomena of experi- 
ence, however, as they appear in con- 
sciousness are too complex, too unique, to 
be forced into the closed circle of physical 
phenomena. The explanation of mind, as 
the product of material forces, is, more- 
over, necessarily stated in terms and by 
means of concepts essentially mental. 
We are confronted, therefore, with this 
anomaly, that the mind is accounted for 
by an idea, namely, the idea of universal 
causation, which idea must have been it- 
self constructed by the mind which it 
purports to explain. There is here evi- 
dently a " weak arguing and a fallacious 
drift." 

The doctrine of materialism runs coun- 
ter to the theory of evolution, although 
the materialists very confidently refer 
to this theory as fortifying their own 
position. If consciousness is a by-prod- 



THE PKOBLEM OF BEING 45 

uct of cerebral functions, and is in no 
sense a real factor amid the causal series 
of ph3"siological excitations and corre- 
sponding reactions, then the phenomena 
of consciousness can haye been of no real 
advantage to the organism in the process 
of its development. For, if it is not a real 
factor and does not initiate any activity 
or modify, in any degree whatever, its 
physical accompaniments, then it cannot 
influence the development of the organ- 
ism one way or the other. But it is one 
of the essentials of evolution that what- 
ever function fails to influence the growth 
of the organism tends therefore to disap- 
pear entirely in the process of develop- 
ment. In passing, however, from a lower 
to a higher order of animal life we are 
struck with the growing complexity and 
scope of the phenomena of consciousness. 
They do not tend to disappear. On the 
contrary, we are confronted with the pal- 
pable fact that consciousness with its 
power of initiative has proved the potent 
factor in the activities and achievements 
of man, which has assui^ed the preservation 



46 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

o£ the species and its dominance over the 
entire realm of nature. Consciousness is 
therefore a principal factor and not a sec- 
ondary product in the evolution of man. 

Materialism is an insidious doctrine, 
appealing especially to many in this age, 
because it seems to be confirmed by the 
results of science and to be in strict accord 
vi^ith the scientific spirit and point of 
view. For this reason Lange, in his His- 
tory of Materialism^ speaks of Democritus 
as the one among all the ancient philoso- 
phers who was most truly modern, because 
his essentially materialistic conceptions 
were most akin to the present day mode 
of regarding the universe of physical phe- 
nomena. The brilliant coterie of eigh- 
teenth century philosophers in France, 
among whom La Mettrie, Diderot, D'Hol- 
bach, Helv^tius, and Cabanis shone con- 
spicuously, clothed their teachings in the 
garb of such fascinating plausibility that to 
a superficial mind they seem to be demon- 
stratively conclusive. In the nineteenth 
century, materialism is more distinctively 
German than French; the chief apostles of 



THE PROBLEM OF BEING 47 

German materialism are Feuerbach, Mole- 
schott, Biichner, Vogt, and Haeckel. 
Tliey reinforced the earlier position by 
an appeal to the enormous mass of scien- 
tific facts which the marvellous researches 
of the nineteenth century have revealed. 
The influence of such teaching has been 
far-reaching and pervasive. 

Professor Flint, in his Anti'Theistio 
Theories^ has spoken very significantly of 
this influence: "But it is not to be 
hoped that materialism will ever quite be 
got rid of, so long as the constitution of 
the human mind and the character of 
human society remain substantially what 
they are. Physical nature and its laws 
explain much, and so long as the human 
mind is prone to exaggeration, and edu- 
cation is imperfect and one-sided, and 
society is more under the influence of the 
seen than the unseen, of the temporal than 
the eternal, it may be anticipated that 
many will fancy that matter and motion 
explain everything, and this fancy is 
the essence of materialism. Thus, mate- 
rialism is a danger to which individuals 



48 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

and societies will always be more or less 
exposed. The present generation, how- 
ever, which is growing up, will obviously 
be very specially exposed to it; as much 
so, perhaps, as any generation in the his- 
tory of the world. Within the last thirty 
years the great wave of spiritualistic or 
idealistic thought, which has borne to us 
on its bosom most of what is of chief value 
in the nineteenth century, has been re- 
ceding and decreasing; and another, which 
is in the main driven by materialistic 
forces, has been gradually rising behind 
it, vast and threatening. It is but-site 
crests that we at present see; it is but a 
certain vague shaking produced by it that 
we at present feel; but we shall probably 
soon enough fail not both to see and feel 
it fully and distinctly."^ 

Spiritualism. — The view of the uni- 
verse which reduces all phenomena to a 
manifestation of some kind of psychical 
force is spiritualism. Leibniz may be re- 
garded as the father of this theory in its 

1 Flint, Anti'Theistic Theories, pp. 98, 99. 



THE PROBLEM OF BEING 49 

modern form at least. In ancient times 
Plato was as essentially spiritualistic in 
his teachings as Democritus was material- 
istic. Leibniz's monads were regarded as 
centres of force which, in all cases, could 
be traced to a common source, essentially 
psychical in its nature. Schopenhauer 
defined this psychic force underlying 
material phenomena as essentially will 
whose striving initiates motion. As spir- 
itualism is a view diametrically opposed to 
materialism, it might seem at first glance 
that the arguments which are valid against 
materialism would make for the support 
of spiritualism. Yet materialism false 
does not argue spiritualism true ; for the 
most cogent arguments against material- 
ism bear upon its monistic features, and 
these arguments also make against spir-r 
itualism regarded as a monistic philosophy. 
The transition from mind to matter is as 
bewilderingly mysterious as the transition 
from matter to mind. The two disparate 
phenomena cannot be brought under the 
single category either of matter or of 
mind. Spiritualism, however, as a mon- 



60 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

istic system has a more rational ground for 
claiming to be an exclusive philosophy 
than materialism, for the elements of con- 
sciousness, the psychical part of man's 
nature, are more adequately expressive of 
the Ego, the real self, than the material. 
The world with its phenomena of cause 
and effect, the endless series of mechani- 
cal sequences, and of chemical reactions, 
the manifold processes of vital growth, 
seem foreign to the inner world of self, 
which is essentially a world of conscious- 
ness. We know nothing of matter pure 
and simple, only of matter as it is per- 
ceived and translated into the terms of 
conscious experience. The spiritualist, 
therefore, insists that it is easier to ex- 
plain matter by mind than to explain 
mind by matter, inasmuch as the mental 
is the more familiar of the two, being, as 
it is, the mode in which the self finds its 
essential expression* 

The hypothesis, however, which con- 
ceives all phenomena as the manifestation 
of a psychical energy presupposes rather 
gratuitously, it must be confessed, a 



THE PROBLEM OF BEING 51 

knowledge of the fundamental constitu- 
tion of matter which the possibilities of 
exact observation do not warrant. Every 
atom in the universe may be only a centre 
of psychical force, and yet, as we cannot 
demonstrate this, we should not attempt 
to construct a theory upon it. 

The Theory of Identity, — This theory 
regards mind and matter as different 
phases of one and the same being, which 
is neither mind nor matter. The physical 
and the psychical phenomena are regarded 
as two closed circuits, each complete in 
itself; the movements, however, within 
the one sphere run parallel to the activi- 
ties of - the other. The theory is often 
called the theory of parallelism. Physi- 
cal energy is wholly accounted for in the 
physiological effects upon the nervous 
system; no vestige of it is available to 
account for the psychical manifestations. 
The latter, therefore, must be referred to 
a sphere of activity of their own kind, in 
which they operate in such a manner that 
the phenomena of the two spheres mani- 
fest themselves synchronously and har- 



62 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

moniously. The parallelism of the two 
spheres may be illustrated by the corre- 
spondence which exists between a con- 
nected series of sounds on the one hand, 
and the interpretation of these sounds in a 
series of connected thoughts. The sound 
is physical merely, but the mind recog- 
nizes a thought value corresponding to 
each varying shade of sound. When, 
however, a foreigner hears a language un- 
known to him, there is no such mental 
correspondence, the inner circuit is not 
paralleled to the outer. The sounds are 
unintelligible and remain sounds, mere 
sounds. But even a bare sound without 
significance has a corresponding psychical 
value, for the sensation of the sound 
differs from the stimulus, which is the 
antecedent of the sensation. This paral- 
lelism obtains throughout our whole con- 
scious experience from the lower level 
of correspondence between stimulus and 
sensation, to the higher plain of corre- 
spondence between outer symbols and the 
inner thought processes which interpret 
these symbols. 



THE PROBLEM OF BEING 53 

It is urged, moreover, that there is a 
proportionality as well as parallelism 
between the two spheres, so that the ratio 
between the amount of stimulus and the 
corresponding intensity of the sensation 
can be definitely measured, and that the 
resulting law which formulates such a 
relation is capable of precise expression. 
As thus stated, parallelism has become a 
working hypothesis which underlies all 
investigations in experimental psychology, 
and is accepted as such by monists and 
dualists alike. There is, however, an ad- 
ditional assumption which some would 
regard as a necessary consequence of the 
foregoing, and which, in attempting to 
discover the ground of the parallelism in 
addition to the statement of it as a fact, 
transforms the working hypothesis into a 
metaphysical explanation. It is contended 
that the parallelism of the physical phe- 
nomena of the one sphere and the activities 
of consciousness in the other implies a 
substantial identity underlying this two- 
fold manifestation. Matter and mind, 
therefore, must be regarded as comple- 



54 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

mentary phases of one and the same 
ground substance which is neither matter 
nor mind. This is the view of Spinoza in 
earlier times, more recently of Herbert 
Spencer, and, in the circle of experimental 
psychologists, the view substantially of 
Fechner. This theory is often called Neo- 
Spinozism. The popularity of this view 
is indicated, in a measure, by the pres- 
ent revival of interest in the writings of 
Spinoza. 

It is to be noticed that there is a ten- 
dency to emphasize either the material or 
the mental in one's conception of the 
nature of the underlying substance in 
which the two are supposed to inhere. 
Thus Leibniz, in following Spinoza, 
placed the emphasis upon the psychical 
phase to such an extent as to make it the 
sole essence of all being. On the other 
hand, the English philosopher, Hobbes, 
regarded the material rather than the psy- 
chical as the more fundamental and essen- 
tial of the two. In this Hobbes expresses 
the conviction of many of the modern 
scientific investigators in the field of ex- 



THE PROBLEM OF BEING 55 

perimental psychology. The doctrine of 
parallelism has this to its credit, that it 
has brought the psychical activities to 
the fore as something not wholly ex- 
plained, at least as by-products of the 
material. 

A criticism of the theory will reveal 
several weak points in its structure. In 
the first place it assumes an accompany- 
ing psychical manifestation for every 
physical phenomenon, whereas we are only 
aware of this parallelism in connection 
with a limited portion of the material 
universe, namely, the sphere of brain 
modifications. Mr. Romanes, in his ad- 
mirable essay. The World as Ejects indi- 
cates the possibility of there being a world 
consciousness in connection with all forms 
of matter, similar to the consciousness 
which is manifest in connection with brain 
activities. He speaks of the world as 
eject, using that term to suggest the pos- 
sible function of consciousness associated 
with the world, which may correspond to 
that form of consciousness which we have 
always associated exclusively with the 



56 THE PKOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Ego, or the subject. A similar idea we 
find in the lines of Browning : — 

" For many a thrill 
Of kinship I confess to, with the powers 
Called Nature ; animate, inanimate. 
In parts or in the whole, there's something there 
Man-like that somehow meets the man in me." 

There may be a soul of the world, there 
may be, as has already been said, a psy- 
chical side, of which we are not aware, 
to every atom in the universe, and the 
psychical side, like the moon, may show 
us ever but the one face, the other forever 
in the shadoAv; but, at best, this is only a 
conjecture, it presents no solid foundation 
upon which to rest a theory. 

Moreover, we know from psychological 
investigation that the physiological circuit 
must reach a certain degree of intensity 
as regards any stimulus, before there is 
a corresponding sensation. We do not 
always hear the persistent summons of the 
alarm clock. The degree of intensity 
which the stimulus must reach in order 
to produce consciousness of a sensation, is 
not a constant quantity. It differs with 



THE PROBLEM OF BEING 67 

individuals; it differs in the experience 
of a single person at different times, and 
under different circumstances, depending 
largely upon his attention at the moment, 
or upon his passing interests. The Indian 
guide perceives a whole world of sights 
and sounds to which his companion is 
blind; or, if that same Indian is hot on 
the trail of a foe, he, too, may find his 
field of perception restricted by the fever 
of warfare. We find, again, that there is 
a complete cessation of consciousness in 
sleep; stimulation of the end-organs of 
sense is followed by no parallel manifesta- 
tion in consciousness. In an extreme 
manner, this is seen in cases of brain 
injury, where consciousness in certain 
modes of its manifestation ceases alto- 
gether, yet upon restoration of the injured 
part, the chain of ideas is resumed pre- 
cisely at the point where it was broken 
off. The physiological circuit is active 
throughout the interval of sleep or brain 
injury. What psychical activity has been 
going on parallel to it, and yet of which 
there is no consciousness whatsoever? 



68 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

These considerations indicate certain 
gaps in the continuity of parallelism, and 
prove the extreme difficulty of coordinat- 
ing perfectly the two systems of material 
and conscious activities. 

There is, moreover, a vagueness which 
envelops that indefinite something which 
is neither matter nor mind, yet lies at the 
basis of either system, synthesizing the 
two. 

However the point of view may be 
shifted, the manifest disparity between 
motion and thought, between matter and 
mind, still confronts us. It was the 
despair of reaching any satisfactory solu- 
tion of this perplexing problem which led 
Du Bois-Reymond to utter his famous 
comment concerning it : " Ignoramus ! 
Ignorabimus! " 



CHAPTER IV 

THE WORLD PROBLEM (" COSMOLOGY ") 

THE world problem, or cosmology, 
proved of special interest to the 
ancient Greek mind. The earliest philo- 
sophical inquiries were concerned with the 
possibility of discovering some primal ele- 
ment in the world structure to which 
the various conflicting and interacting 
phenomena might be reduced. The 
speculations which mark the beginnings 
of Greek philosophy were crude and fan- 
ciful, and yet the spirit of these early 
thinkers was commendable, for they were 
searchers after a unity underlying the 
world phenomena, and as such they are 
worthy the name of philosophers. Of these 
thinkers, one of the earliest was Thales, 
who lived about 600 B.C. He regarded 
water as the universal substratum, of 
which all things were more or less com- 
plex manifestations. To Anaximander, 

69 



60 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

however, the universal atmosphere seemed 
to be the true mother of all existing things ; 
and, in a similar manner, Anaximenes re- 
garded air, or breath, as the source of all 
being. Heraclitus saw in fire the essence 
of all tilings. He regarded fire as the 
cause of a universal motion, everything 
being derived from it and everything striv- 
ing to return to the source whence it 
emanated. The universe presented to 
him a scene of constant change, of per- 
petual flow ; there was no stability and no 
abiding unity. Still another old Greek, 
Empedocles, had his peculiar view of the 
elemental source, which he declared to be 
of a fourfold nature, — earth, air, fire, and 
water. 

In the midst of these puerile conjectures 
there were, however, certain intimations 
of a more philosophical explanation. 
There was a tendency, early manifesting 
itself, to discern beneath all phenomena a 
substantial unity, and, moreover, to regard 
this unifying principle as something other 
than material. Thus Xenophanes speaks 
of the source of all things as a Being 



THE WOELD PEOBLEM 61 

which is one and infinite; and Parmenides 
speaks of the same as the All-One. Also, 
in addition to the four material elements 
of Empedocles, — earth, air, fire, and 
water, — that philosopher insists upon a 
spiritual principle, love, as the actuating 
force behind the material elements, which 
are to be regarded merely as its agents. 

According to Anaxagoras, there is in 
the universe an organizing and unifying 
power, which he calls the 2^01)9, i.e. the 
mind, or reason, and this principle renders 
the world a cosmos instead of a chaos ; to 
its purposeful activity are due the order, 
harmony, and beauty of the universe. 

Thus it may be seen that while the 
question of the underlying world structure 
was originally answered in material terms, 
yet a stage was soon reached in the unfold- 
ing and deepening thought of the old 
world where only a spiritualistic answer 
was deemed satisfactory. The problems 
of cosmology resulting in a solution which 
maintained a spiritual principle at the 
basis of the world fabric, naturally led 
to deeper questions as to the more precise 



62 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

nature of such a spiritual principle. Thus 
the worid problem became at its last 
analysis an inquiry concerning the being 
and nature of God. Is there an underly- 
ing unity amidst the manifold world phe- 
nomena? and is this unity a spiritual 
principle, which manifests itself in a su- 
preme Being, whom we may regard as the 
Author and Governor of the universe ? 

The answers to these questions vary 
from an absolute denial of the being of 
God, on the one hand to an absolute 
identification of all existence with the 
being of God, on the other. The early 
negative position was formulated in the 
atomism of Democritus. According to 
his teaching, as we have seen, the world 
was composed of an indefinite number of 
indestructible particles acting indepen- 
dently through forces within themselves 
toward necessarily determined ends. All 
phenomena were thus reduced to the 
"mechanics of atoms." There was no 
such thing as purpose or design, only an 
inevitable fate swaying the affairs of men. 
In such a system, there is no need, and in 



THE WORLD PROBLEM 63 

fact no place for the being of God. De- 
mocritus was the natural father of mate- 
rialism with its atheistical implications. 
The atomism of Democritus was developed 
at length in the system of Lucretius as 
expressed in his didactic poem, De natura r 
rerum. We find it also in the teachings 
of Epicurus and of the Epicurean school. 
The mechanical explanation of the uni- 
verse, however, was not satisfactory to 
the Greek mind, and therefore from that 
early day to the present there have always 
been many who have sought a more philo- 
sophical solution of the problem. The 
inadequacy of the mechanical view of the 
universe is aptly stated by Windelband: — 
"An archaeologist of nature may trace 
back the genealogy of life, the origination 
of one species from another, according to 
mechanical principles as far as possible; 
he will always be obliged to stop with 
an original organization^ which he cannot 
explain through the mere mechanism of 
inorganic matter."^ 

1 Windelband, History of Philosophy^ p. 565. 



64 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Among those, however, who are not sat- 
isfied with the mechanical explanation of 
the universe, there is a considerable diver- 
sity of opinion concerning the being and 
nature of that spiritualistic principle 
which, it is affirmed, must lie at the basis 
of all the world phenomena. The result- 
ing theories are known under the names 
of polytheism, theism, deism, and pan- 
theism. They form the several positive 
answers to the great world problem. We 
will consider them separately. 

Polytheism, — This was the early super- 
stitious belief in gods maiiy and lords 
many. As a philosophy it has no valid 
claim for serious consideration, and may 
be relegated to the sphere of mythological 
speculation. The dawning philosophical 
sense of the Greeks could not abide the 
crude anthropomorphism of the polythe- 
istic belief, that is, the representation of 
the gods in the form of men with like pas- 
sions and limitations. There was an early 
recognition of the fact that God must be 
one and spiritual, rather than many and 
of human habits and propensities. A 



THE WORLD PEOBLEM 65 

most earnest protest against these human 
gods was raised by Xenophanes, one of 
the earliest of the Greek philosophers. 
Aristotle's description of him is very 
striking: "Casting his eyes upwards at 
the immensity of heaven he declared that 
The One is God." Xenophanes thus 
became the father of a monotheistic phi- 
losophy, which regards God as one and 
spiritual. 

Monotheism, — This theory, whose very 
name sharply contrasts it with polytheism, 
is a belief in the one supreme Being, the 
power behind the world and its phe- 
nomena and the unifying principle in 
nature and in human life. Monotheism 
in its distinction from polytheism em- 
braces the several systems of theism, 
deism, and pantheism. 

Of these, deism is the belief which re- 
gards the Deity as existing outside the 
world which He once created, sustain- 
ing to it a relation similar to that which 
the artisan sustains to the work which 
his hands and brain have fashioned. 
Deism, therefore, emphasizes that attribute 



66 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

of God, which is designated as His tran- 
scendence, that is, the idea of God as 
dwelling apart from the universe of men 
and things. Pantheism is a natural reac- 
tion from deism; as the latter emphasizes 
the transcendence of God to the exclusion 
of His immanence, so the former empha- 
sizes His immanence to the exclusion of 
His transcendence. God's immanence is 
the manifestation of Himself in His 
works; if, therefore, God manifests Him- 
self completely in His works, and His 
transcendence is denied or ignored, then 
it follows that God is everything, and 
everything is God. Theism holds a mean 
bet-ween these two extremes. 

Theism. — This attempts to harmonize 
in one consistent theory the tivo seemingly 
conflicting ideas of God's transcendence 
and of God's immanence. It is differen- 
tiated from deism in that it insists upon 
the sustaining and operating presence of 
God in all phenomena of the universe. 
Theism- denies the possibility of an " ab- 
sentee God." It differs, however, on the 
other hand, from pantheism in affirming 



THE WORLD PKOBLEM 67 

the existence of a real distinction between 
God and His works, between the Creator 
and the creature, especially as this dis- 
tinction is emphasized in the conscious- 
ness of a self which refuses to be absorbed 
in the great All of pantheism. Thus 
theism is an attempt to synthesize within 
a higher unity the two opposed ideas of 
transcendence and immanence, and which 
regards God as manifesting Himself in 
and through His works, and yet as a 
personality, distinct from them. 

Deism, — Deism has a greater affinity 
with polytheism than either pantheism 
or theism. It is a refined form of poly- 
theism. It is true that it disavows gods 
many, but its one god is conceived after 
the similitude of human beings according 
to the manner of the polytheistic concep- 
tion. The God of the deist is an "en- 
larged man," an artificer rather than a 
creator; the world is regarded as a stu- 
pendous mechanism rather than a mani- 
festation of the life of the supreme Being. 
Deism flourished in the eighteenth cen- 
tury. Its founder was Lord Herbert of. 



68 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Cherbury. Among its most eminent rep- 
resentatives we find Locke and Voltaire. 
It developed within the sphere of its ad- 
herents two opposed tendencies, one lead- 
ing towards pantheism, the other towards 
atheism. They were natural reactions 
from the artificial doctrines of deism. 
The violent separation of God and nature 
might leave the impression, on the one 
hand, that nature needs no God to ex- 
plain her manifestations and phenomena, 
or, on the other hand, the felt need of 
God in and through nature's manifold 
being might become so emphasized as to 
result in pantheism, — the swing of the 
pendulum to the extreme opposite of 
deism. 

Pantheism. — The universe is regarded 
as the manifestation of God, solely and 
completely. God is all. A striking 
statement of pantheistic belief, at the 
same time a criticism of deism, we find 
in the words of Goethe : " What were a 
God who only gave the world a push from 
without, or let it spin around His finger? 
I look for a God who moves the world 



THE WORLD PROBLEM 69 

from within, who fosters nature in Him- 
self, Himself in nature; so that naught 
of all that lives and moves and has its 
being in Him ever forgets His force or 
His spirit."^ 

Dr. Martineau has said that pantheism 
marks a temperament rather than a system, 
the immediate vision of the poet rather 
than the reflective interpretation of the 
philosopher.^ The atmosphere of mysti- 
cism which envelops pantheistic specula- 
tion is naturally most alluring to the poet, 
and especially the poet to whom nature 
has revealed the spirit of its being. One 
of the most profound and subtle expres- 
sions of pantheistic interpretation we find 
in the "Lines Composed above Tintern 
Abbey," where Wordsworth speaks in the 
following vein of nature's spell over his 
soul : — 

1 Was war' ein Gott, der nur von aussen stiesse 
Im Kreis das All am Finger laufen liesse ! 
Ihm ziemt's, die Welt im Innern zu bewegen, 
Natur in Sicli, Sich in Natur zu liegen 

So dass, was in Ihm lebt und webt und ist, 
Nie Seine Kraft, nie Seinen Geist vermisst. 

2 Martineau, A Study of Beligion^ Vol. II, p. 141. 



70 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

" For I have learned 
To look on nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth ; but hearing oftentimes 
The still, sad music of humanity, 
'Nov harsh nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts : a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 
Wliose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man : 
A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

Pantheism takes two forms, which do 
not differ, however, fundamentally. The 
one identifies God completely with the 
world of being, coming to His highest 
manifestation in the consciousness of man. 
From the lowest to the highest, from the 
simplest to the most complex forms of this 
manifestation, all is God. The other view 
emphasizes the divine as the only reality 
and reduces the facts of existence to a 
mere appearance, the shadowy semblance 
of reality. While the former view denies 
all difference between God and the world, 
including man, the latter insists that the 



THE WORLD PROBLEM 71 

seeming difference must be regarded as a 
mental illusion, having no basis in reality. 
In either case, God's immanence is mag- 
nified to the exclusion of His transcen- 
dence. It is a convenient philosophy, 
the reference of everything to God; it 
unties many hard knots, it cuts in twain 
many more. It was a veritable stroke of 
genius that suggested the reduction of the 
manifold variety of the universe to one 
simple category. We feel instinctively 
the seriousness and the profundity of 
thought which characterizes the creed of 
pantheism. This is felt in a peculiar 
manner in Hegel's admirable statement 
of the pantheistic belief: — 

"The ancient philosophers have de- 
scribed God under the image of a round 
ball. But if that be His nature, God has 
unfolded it; and in the actual world He 
has opened the closed shell of truth into a 
system of Nature, into a State-system, a 
system of Law and Morality, into the sys- 
tem of the world's History. The shut fist 
has become an open hand, the fingers of 
which reach out to lay hold of man's mind, 



72 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

and draw it to Himself. Nor is the human 
mind a self-involved intelligence, blindly 
moving within its own secret recesses. It 
is no mere feeling and groping about in 
a vacuum, but an intelligent system of 
rational organization. Of that system, 
Thought is the summit in point of form, 
and Thought may be described as the capa- 
bility of going beyond the mere surface of 
God's self-expansion, — or rather as the 
capability, hj means of reflection upon it, 
of entering into it, and then, when the 
entrance has been secured, of retracing in 
thought God's expansion of Himself. To 
take this trouble is the express duty and 
end of ends set before the thinking mind, 
ever since God laid aside His rolled-up 
form and revealed Himself."^ 

That which characterizes the point of 
view of pantheism, and at the same time 
marks the point of departure from deistic 
conceptions, is the pantheistic interpreta- 
tion of the teleological argument for the 
being of God. The teleological argument 
is based upon the evidence of design which 

1 Wallace, The Logic of Hegel^ p. 26. 



THE WORLD PROBLEM 73 

is manifested throughout the varied adap- 
tations of means to ends in nature. The 
teleological ideas of the deists may be 
most adequately represented by an analogy 
which they insist exists between the prod- 
uct of a mechanic's labor, such as a watch, 
and the world which is similarly conceived 
as the handiwork of God. As the watch 
contains within its own mechanism evi- 
dence of a designer and maker, so the 
orderly adjustments and purposeful con- 
trivances in nature indicate a great and 
wise Designer. 

The pantheist, however, repudiates this 
conception of teleology as being external 
and mechanical. In its stead, he would 
substitute an immanent teleology, that is, 
a force within the organism moulding it 
into its proper form and adapting its or- 
gans to their appropriate functions, and all 
parts to harmonious ends. Instead of the 
conception of an architect planning and 
fashioning an organism from without, 
there is the conception of an architectonic 
principle operative within the organism, 
fulfilling its own ends. This immanent 



74 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

finality reaches its most perfect develop- 
ment and highest realization in the pur- 
posive activities of man. It is the power 
within nature and man which to the pan- 
theist evidences the Divine Being. The 
great Designer, therefore, could not have 
worked upon the world materials, and 
have fashioned them into form and life 
from without, for only in and through 
them does He manifest Himself. 

At this point, theism is in perfect ac- 
cord with pantheism. The immanence 
of God and the doctrine of immanent 
finality appeal to the theist as well. 
The theist takes exception, not to that 
which pantheism asserts, but to that 
which pantheism denies, or ignores, 
namely, the transcendence of God. To 
equate God with the universe without 
remainder, exhausts His being and mani- 
festly limits Him to a definite compre- 
hension within finite bounds. He is no 
longer the Eternal, the Infinite One ! God 
is in nature, and yet He is more than 
nature. Spinoza, the pantheist who was 
styled the God-intoxicated man, was led 



THE WORLD PEOBLEM 75 

to acknowledge a real distinction, first 
insisted upon in Arabian philosophy, 
between Natura naturans and Natura 
naturata^ that is, nature as Creator and 
nature as creature. In this distinction 
lies the essence of the theistic conten- 
tion. Moreover, the absorption of all 
things in God reduces man's personality 
to zero. This meets with a very deter- 
mined protest from our self-asserting con- 
sciousness, which refuses to be merged in 
the universal All. In the relations 
between God and man, as in the relations 
between God and the world, it is still 
possible to hold that God manifests Him- 
self to man in the still small voice within, 
and yet that man himself is more than a 
manifestation of God. There is a revela- 
tion of God to man in the light of reason, 
in the voice of conscience, and in the in- 
spiration of the truth, yet it is a revela- 
tion to man ; the self receives, the self is 
moved, the self is preserved in its integ- 
rity as the self, the man, and not as God. 
Dr. Martineau enters a most earnest plea 
for the due recognition of a distinct 



76 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

selfhood: "What then becomes of the 
human personality when all its character- 
istics are thus conveyed over to the Su- 
preme Mind? The very terms in which 
it is described abolish it. If truth, if 
righteousness, if love and faith, are all an 
influx of foreign light, the endowments, 
in virtue of which we are susceptible of 
them, are mere passive and recipient or- 
gans on to which they are delivered, and 
we have no agency of our own. But a 
reason that does no thinking for itself, a 
conscience that flings aside no temptation 
and springs to no duty, affection that toils 
in no chosen service of love, a religious 
sentiment that waits for such faith as may 
come into it, simply negative their own 
functions and disappear."^ 

There is a tendency, strange to say, in 
the development of pantheistic thought 
towards materialism. It is characteristic 
of any extreme position that it provokes 
a reactionary movement in the direction 
of its opposite. Pantheism, in identify- 
ing God with the world, leads some of its 

1 Martineau, A Study of Beligion^ Vol. II, p. 180. 



THE WORLD PROBLEM 77 

adherents to ask the question: "If the 
world is everything, why call it God? 
The only story the world tells us of it- 
self, is the story of material atoms and 
mechanical relations. Is not the idea of 
God, therefore, wholly illusory?" 

Such questioning has appealed to many 
who were originally avowed pantheists. 
Several of the Hegelian pantheists devel- 
oped along these lines. They are spoken 
of as "Hegelians of the Left." The 
change of front is notably illustrated in 
the dissolving views of Feuerbach, who, 
in his Thoughts on Death and Immortality^ 
regards the disappearance of man's per- 
sonality in the divine All as the true 
immortality, and yet, nevertheless, be-/ 
came later one of the most pronounced 
advocates of a gross materialism. 

Materialism is the bringing of God 
down to the level of nature, and pan- 
theism is bringing nature up to God. 
It is easy to see, therefore, how a com- 
mon point of view may prove to be a 
point of departure whence diverge lines 
of opposed thought. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PROBLEM OF MIND ("PSYCHOLOGY") 

THE study of the mind suggests cer- 
tain philosophical questions of a gen- 
eral nature, as well as the special problems 
of a strict psychology. The distinction 
between the philosophy of mind, and the 
mind considered as the subject matter of 
a special science, is a distinction as old as 
Aristotle, and yet one which, in the his- 
tory of philosophy, has often been over- 
looked or ignored. The modern point of 
view regards psychology exclusively as a 
special science. The philosophical aspect 
of psychology is flatly questioned. There 
are, however, certain philosophical ques- 
tions which thrust themselves upon one's 
consideration, although it may be main- 
tained that there are no satisfactory an- 
swers to them. 

Of these questions there are two of 

chief importance. 

78 



THE PROBLEM OF MIND 79 

1. As to the being and nature of the 
soul, the 'yjrvxv c>f man. 

2. As to the primary mode of psychical 
activity, whether it is of the nature of 
intellection or volition. 

The Suhstantialists and Actualists, — 
The problem as to the being and nature 
of a soul starts the inquiry, w^hether there 
is a separate self distinct from the phe- 
nomena of consciousness, or whether the 
term, soul, is merely an expression de- 
noting the sum total of conscious activi- 
ties. The former is the view of the 
so-called suhstantialists, of whom Des- 
cartes is an eminent representative. They 
regard the soul as a real substance, a 
unifying principle, of which the several 
mental modes and activities are separate 
manifestations. 

On the other hand, the view of the 
opposed school, the actualists, is that all 
that we know are merely the states of 
consciousness, actual happenings, related 
to each other, it is true, and mutually 
modifying each other, but in no way 
unified in the sense of being all manifes- 



80 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

tations of an underlying substance in 
which they all inhere. 

According to this idea, consciousness is 
represented as a stream of passing events, 
with no enduring and abiding ground. 
This view we find expressed in the an- 
cient teachings of Indian philosophy. 
Gautama, the Buddha, insisted that be- 
lief in Attavada, the doctrine of the sepa- 
rate individuality of the self, was one of 
the chief heresies by which man is insidi- 
ously led into error. He compared the 
human individual to a chariot, which was 
only a chariot so long as it was a com- 
plete whole, of seat, axle, wheels, pole, 
etc., — beneath the sum of the parts there 
was no substratum which was the real 
chariot, — so there can be no substance 
underlying the ever changing experiences 
of consciousness. There being no sepa- 
rate self, the idea of a soul and an immor- 
tal existence apart from an absorption in 
the Eternal Being was a delusion of the 
mind and a snare of the heart. Such was 
the doctrine of Buddha, and it has its 
modern counterpart. 



THE PROBLEM OF MIND 81 

From the standpoint of the substantial- 
ist it is urged that as the material phe- 
nomena of the world are referred, each 
to some appropriate material substance of 
which it is the manifestation, so, also, in 
reference to the consciousness the various 
phenomena must inhere in some analo- 
gous mental substratum, which we call 
mind, or the soul, or the self. As we 
say that odor, color, form are attributes 
of one and the same substance, as a 
flower, so also the will, desire, emotion 
are functions of one and the same mental 
substance, the underlying self. From the 
necessities of the case there can be no 
proof of the existence of the self, for the 
self cannot demonstrate its own existence 
except in a direct awareness of a contin- 
ued identity and prevailing unity in the 
midst of the varying experiences of time 
and space. As Kant says, the idea of the 
soul as an unconditioned real unity of all 
the phenomena of the inner sense is in- 
deed as little capable of proof as it is of 
refutation. It must be regarded simply 
as evidencing itself in an immediate de- 



\ 



§2 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

liverance of consciousness. This direct 
testimony of consciousness is held, on the 
part of the actualists, to be wholly illu- 
soTy. It is urged that there are certain 
purely physical feelings which we confuse 
and misinterpret as psychical assurances 
of a self distinct from the perceptionf, 
volitions, or emotions which occupy, at 
the time^ the field of consciousness. Thus 
we fancy that we are conscious of a self 
distinct from the fleeting feelings of the 
moment, whereas it is only a nervous or 
muscular strain which is experienced, and 
which is interpreted as an experience of a 
self. It is insisted that this is but one of 
the many by-products of consciousness, a 
phenomenon so constant and yet withal so 
colorless that it cannot be referred to any 
particular state of consciousness, to any 
definite idea, or feeling, or to any exter- 
nal object of perception; and therefore 
because of this very vagueness and indefi- 
niteness it is believed to be the founda- 
tion and the unifying principle itself of 
consciousness. 

As an illustration of this theory, the 



THE PROBLEM OF MIND 83 

following experience of Professor James 
will no doubt prove of interest: "It is 
difficult for me to detect in mental activ- 
ity any purely spiritual element at all. 
Whenever my introspective glance suc- 
ceeds in turning around quickly enough 
to catch one of these manifestations of 
spontaneity in the act, all it can ever feel 
distinctly is some bodily process, for the 
most part taking place within the head. 
I cannot think in visual terms, for ex- 
ample, without feeling a fluctuating play 
of pressures, convergences, divergences, 
and accommodations in my eyeballs. In 
reasoning, I find that I am apt to have 
a kind of vaguely localized diagram in my 
mind, with the various fractional objects 
of the thought disposed at particular 
points thereof; and the oscillations of 
my attention from one of them to another 
are most distinctly felt as alternations of 
direction in movements occurring inside 
the head. In consenting and negating, 
and in making a mental effort, the move- 
ments seem more complex, and I find 
them harder to describe. The opening 



84 THE PKOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

and closing of the glottis play a great 
part in these operations, and, less dis- 
tinctly, the movements of the soft palate, 
etc., shutting off the posterior nares from 
the mouth. My glottis is like a sensitive 
valve, intercepting my breath instantane- 
ously at every mental hesitation or felt 
aversion to the object of my thought, and 
as quickly opening to let the air pass 
through my throat and nose, the moment 
the repugnance is overcome. The feeling 
of the movement of this air is, in me, one 
strong ingredient of the feeling of assent. 
The movements of the muscles of the 
brow and eyelids also respond very sen- 
sitively to every fluctuation in the agree- 
ableness or disagreeableness of what comes 
before my mind. In a sense, then, it may 
be truly said, that in one person at least 
the 'self of selves,' when carefully exam- 
ined, is found to consist mainly of the 
collection of these peculiar motions in the 
head, or between the head and throat. "^ 
By others it is urged that the self 

1 James, Psychology^ Vol. I, pp. 300-301. 



THE PROBLEM OF MIND 85 

which is fancied is really nothing more 
nor less than the visual picture of one's 
person, rising in consciousness and barely 
recognized as a visual picture, and 'so, in 
a half dreamy way, it is confused with 
the idea of a distinct selfhood. 

Others, again, refer the idea of self to 
the verbal idea of "I," "my," or "mine," 
which, inasmuch as it is no longer recog- 
nized as a verbal idea, lends itself readily 
to a like confusion, and a similar inter- 
pretation. 

In reference to all of these explanations 
of the self, which explain by explaining 
away, it is well to call to mind the pos- 
sibility of there being a real self, or a 
metaphysical self, in distinction from the 
empirical or psychological self. The con- 
sciousness of the empirical self, i.e. the 
self evidenced by these physiological ac- 
companiments, may be mediated through 
a physical feeling, or a visual or verbal 
idea; and yet, this does not preclude 
the possibility of the real self underly- 
ing all of these manifestations of the 
empirical self. The Greeks drew a simi- 



86 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

lar distinction between the '^vxV'i the 
psychological self, and the vov^^ the ra- 
tional self. There is a like distinction 
in the German between Seele and Greist. 
The soul, the z^oO?, the Greist^ is some- 
thing more than conscious states ; it is, in 
the words of Dr. Martineau, "the reflec- 
tive knowledge of having such states."^ 

It may be well at this point to recall 
Hume's famous paragraph concerning the 
impossibility of there being any such 
thing as a distinct self: — 
/ " For my part, when I enter most inti- 
/ mately into what I call myself^ I always 
I stumble on some particular perception or 
' I other of heat or cold, light or shade, love 
I or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can 
catch myself at any time ^without a per- 
ception, and never can observe anything 
but the perception. When my percep- 
tions are removed for any time, as by 
sound sleep, so long am I insensible of 
myself and may truly be said not to exist. 
And were all my perceptions removed by 

1 Martineau, A Study of Beligion^ Yol. II, p. 190. 



THE PROBLEM Olf MIND 87 

death, and could I neither think, nor 
feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the 
dissolution of my body, I should be en- 
tirely annihilated; nor do I conceive what 
is farther requisite to make me a perfect 
nonentity. If any one, upon serious and 
unprejudiced reflection, thinks he has a 
different notion of himself^ I must confess 
I can reason no longer with him. All I 
can allow him is, that he may be in the 
right as well as I, and that we are essen- 
tially different in this particular. He 
may, perhaps, perceive something simple 
and continued which he calls himself; 
though I am certain there is no such 
principle in me. But, setting aside some 
metaphysicians of this kind, I may vent- 
ure to affirm of the rest of mankind that 
they are nothing hut a bundle or collection 
of different perceptions which succeed each 
other with an inconceivable rapidity, and 
are in a perpetual flux and movement." ^ 

Hume may not be able to find the self 
as object, but in the very language which 

1 Treatwe on Human Nature^ Vol. I, Pt. iv, sec. 6. 



88 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

he uses he seems to be vaguely aware of 
the self as subject. There is a self con- 
sciously striving to find the self. The 
self which is searching is implied even in 
the confession of the elusiveness of the 
self which is sought for. Hume, more- 
over, makes an unreasonable demand in 
insisting that the self, if discovered, must 
be found stripped of all its activities. The 
self can never be revealed in its naked 
state. We naturally expect it to appear 
clothed in its attributes, and it is to be 
recognized through the manifestations of 
its own nature, which are the varied phe- 
nomena of consciousness. Man may be 
regarded as a bundle of perceptions, but 
that which unites the perceptions and 
holds together the bundle, must be some- 
thing more than the sum of the percep- 
tions themselves. The discrete parts do 
not unite themselves, but remain discrete 
parts, unless we conceive of a unifying 
principle which integrates the separate 
parts into one systematic whole. 

It is urged, moreover, that the unity 
of our mental states is provided for by 



THE PROBLEM OF MIND 89 

the law of the association of ideas, inas- 
much as every idea present in conscious- 
ness is capable of calling up another idea 
or ideas which are associated with it by 
similarity, contiguity, cause and effect, or 
by some kindred relation. It is true that 
a certain unity is thus attained, but the 
scenes are shifted so rapidly on the stage 
of consciousness that we have a series of 
unified states rather than an underlying 
unity which perdures through all states, 
and to which all must be directly related, 
however diverse they may be. I may have 
an experience A, a definite state of con- 
sciousness which suggests B, and B in 
turn suggests C, and so on to D, E, F, 
G, etc. There is a connecting link of 
association between consecutive terms at 
any given point in the series. But A 
may be related to B through an associa- 
tion of A with a part of B. A totally 
different part of B may be associated with 
C. If this is the case, the continuity of 
relation between A and C is broken. As 
the series increases, the impossibility of 
detecting the underlying unity of associa- 



90 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

tion between A and some far removed 
term in the series, or between an expe- 
rience of last year, or even of yesterday, 
and the present moment of consciousness, 
is apparent. The necessity, therefore, of 
an identical centre of reference for all 
states of consciousness, however widely 
separated and disparate, forces itself upon 
us. In this representation, the relation 
of ideas to each other has been regarded 
as a chain or a series of simply connected 
terms, whereas, in fact, the true represen- 
tation of our states of consciousness is 
that of an extremely complex web of in- 
terrelated ideas at any one given instant 
of time. This complexity increases the 
difficulty of regarding the conscious un- 
derlying unity experienced throughout the 
manifold variety of life's experience, as a 
mere unity of similarity which associated 
ideas bear to one another. Paulsen feels 
this when he defines the soul as a "plu- 
rality of psychical experiences compre- 
hended into the unity of consciousness in 
a manner not further definable."^ 

1 Paulsen, Introduction to Philosophy^ p. 129. 



THE PROBLEM OF MIND 91 

In this definition there is a recognition 
of the fact that the self must be some- 
thing more than the sum of the conscious 
states of experience, and that a unity is 
necessary in which these several states 
may be merged, even though the precise 
nature of that unity may not be further 
defined. Whatever the nature of that 
unity may be, it certainly is something 
more than an association of ideas, which 
can mean only the logical and orderly 
relation of ideas. Underlying all such 
relations there is need of a unifying 
self. 

The testimony of Kant, and of Green, 
to the truth of this doctrine is found in 
a very forcible statement of Professor 
Green: "We have followed him (i.e. 
Kant) also, as we believe every one 
must who has once faced the question, 
in maintaining that a single active 
self-conscious principle, by whatever 
name it be called, is necessary to con- 
stitute a world of experience, as the 
condition under which alone phenomena, 
i.e. appearances to consciousness, can 



92 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

be related to eacli other in a single uni- 
verse."^ 

Prom the point of view of genetic psy- 
chology, that is, the special inquiry con- 
cerning the beginnings and development 
of mental life, it is urged that there is 
a gradual evolution from simple to in- 
creasingly complex states of conscious- 
ness throughout all the successive stages 
of progressive psychical experiences ; and 
that, therefore, the idea of a separate per- 
manent self is incongruous to this con- 
ception of the constant change and the 
shifting scenes of our inner life. Such 
a development, however, does not seem 
necessarily to preclude the idea of an 
original nucleus of growth which pre- 
serves its own identity amid the in- 
definite variety of conscious states, and 
which, at the same time, acts as a unify- 
ing principle in coordinating all the sev- 
eral stages of development within the 
sphere of a permanent personality. 

The Intellectualists and Voluntaryists. — 
We come now to a second problem 

1 Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, § 38. 



THE PEOBLEM OF MIND 93 

within the domain of philosophical psy- 
chology, as to the primary and essential 
nature of consciousness. Is conscious- 
ness to be regarded as essentially intel- 
lect, or as will? This question gives 
rise to two schools. The intellectualist 
insists that the processes of perception, 
conception, judgment, inference, etc., con- 
stitute the foundation of all other men- 
tal experiences. On the other hand, the 
theory of voluntaryism would find the 
beginnings of mental life in the crude 
phenomena of will, in appetites seeking 
gratification, in desires seeking satisfac- 
tion, in the interminable striving and 
struggling which characterize all forms 
of life from the lowest to the highest. 

Intellectualism received a very hearty 
support from Descartes, who emphasized 
the rational as the primal element of 
mind; in this he was followed by Spinoza 
and Leibniz. Later, Herbart, as one of the 
prominent articles of his creed, regarded 
ideas as primary, whose attraction and 
repulsion, after the analogy of material 
bodies, result in desire, feeling, and will. 



94 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

On the other hand, Schopenhauer is the 
chief champion of the school of volun- 
taryism. He insisted that the underlying 
and controlling principle in all mental 
life was the will to live; and that all 
other mental experiences, either directly 
or indirectly, may be reduced to this as 
the original source of them all. The ten- 
dency, to-day, among philosophical think- 
ers, is to magnify the importance of the 
will, and this because it is urged that in 
the will there is a possible point where 
the forces of nature and the forces of 
mind may unite. If matter can be re- 
duced to force, and mind to will, then it 
is maintained the synthesis of material 
force and mental effort under the category 
of the will may not be wholly visionary. 

In reference to the question of the 
primacy of the will or of the intellect, 
it seems that the truth may most probably 
lie in the direction of Lotze's position 
that neither to the intellect nor to the will 
is primacy to be conceded, but that they 
are to be regarded as coordinate powers of 
the mind. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE PBOBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 
( " EPISTEMOLOGY " ) 

OF the general problems of mind, there 
is one special problem, whose discus- 
sion forms a distinct discipline in philos- 
ophy, namely, the problem of knowledge, 
or epistemology. This problem, which, 
in modern philosophy, was started by 
Locke in 1690, presents a twofold as- 
pect, first, respecting the source of our 
knowledge, and, second, respecting its 
nature. 

As to the former question, concerning 
the origin of knowledge, there are two 
views, indicating opposite tendencies in 
thought, known as rationalism and em- 
piricism. 

Rationalism, — The former insists that 
the source of all knowledge is primarily 
in the mind, inasmuch as there are cer- 
tain fundamental principles of which the 

95 



96 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

mind is immediately aware, and which 
give form and system to the crude mate- 
rials of sensation, and which, therefore, 
so far forth, modify and condition all ex- 
perience. Such a view allows as primal 
elements of knowledge the original data 
given through sense-perception. It only 
insists that such data are not the sole 
source of knowledge, but that the mind 
also furnishes its own contributing factors 
to the complete result. For, it is held 
that the mind does not simply receive 
the impressions of the outer world, as 
though they were photographed upon a 
sensitive plate. The mind is regarded 
as active and not passive in the act of 
perception. The mind stamps the raw 
material of the senses with its own die, 
gives a character to that which would be 
merely a confused blending of chaotic 
sensations and automatic reactions, and 
which would lack wholly that orderly ar- 
rangement which characterizes our world 
of perceptions, ideas, and feelings. These 
controlling principles of the mind which, 
it is held, give form to the crude data 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 97 

of perception, are such general ideas as 
those of time, of space, of causation, of logi- 
cal relation, and similar ideas which are 
regarded as of an a priori nature, to dis- 
tinguish them from purely a 'posteriori 
knowledge. The former phrase refers, as 
has been before indicated, to knowledge 
which is prior to and conditions expe- 
rience; the latter expression refers to 
knowledge which is solely the result of 
experience. 

Empiricism. — We will now consider 
the theory which refers all knowledge to 
experience as its source, namely, empiri- 
cism. If such experience, as some hold, 
is essentially and solely the product of 
sensations received in consciousness, then 
it is known as the theory of sensational- 
ism; of which form of empiricism, the 
brilliant French philosopher, Condillac, is 
an eminent representative. The key-note 
of empiricism is found in Locke's oft-re- 
peated and oft-quoted phrase, occurring 
in his JEssay on Hiiman Understanding^ 
"No innate ideas." The Empiricist holds 
that the mind is a tabula rasa^ a surface 



98 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

smooth and clean, impressionable to the 
various sensory stimulations which write 
upon it the records of experience. The 
adherents of this doctrine very stoutly 
maintain that the so-called innate ideas, 
when subjected to the nearer scrutiny of 
a critical analysis, will be found reducible 
to simpler elements, which are manifestly 
the product of experience. Our idea of 
causation, it is insisted, is not an intui- 
tive possession, but it has grown with our 
growth, through repeated observations of 
nature, which indicate an invariability 
and uniformity which we unconsciously 
generalize into an all-embracing formula 
of universal causation. When it is ob- 
jected that even a small child gives evi- 
dence of possessing general ideas, out of 
all proportion in point of completeness 
to the extreme brevity of its limited expe- 
rience, the reply is made, that the seem- 
ingly original mental possessions of the 
child, which its individual experience is 
utterly inadequate to account for, may 
nevertheless be explained by a race expe- 
rience which the child inherits and which 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 99 

in its dawning consciousness appears as 
intuitive knowledge. 

The distinction between rationalism 
and empiricism marks one of the chief 
points of difference between the conti- 
nental and the British philosophers. Of 
the rationalistic school we have Des- 
cartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz as the chief 
representatives, while of the school of 
Empiricism are found Locke, Hume, and 
John Stuart Mill. 

The Critical School, — Kant, as a repre- 
sentative of the so-called critical school, 
insisted upon the empirical origin of the 
gross material elements of knowledge 
through the avenues of the senses, but, 
on the other hand, upon the rationalistic 
origin of the same as regards the formal 
element, which is manifested in the con- 
structive function of the mind. Kant 
expressed this thought in his famous doc- 
trine: "Macht zwar Verstand die Natur, 
aber er schafft sie nicht." "The under- 
standing constructs nature, but does not 
create it." The crude data of nature the 
mind fashions into ideas through its own 



100 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

thought functions. The mind is an archi- 
tect, though not the creator of thought. 

Positivism. — A modified form of empir- 
icism is that which is known as positiv- 
ism, a philosophic system associated with 
the name of its founder, August Comte, 
born in 1789. He insisted upon the posi- 
tive facts of experience, the facts which 
form the subject matter of science, as the 
sole basis of our knowledge. In refer- 
ence to all speculation concerning theo- 
ries which such facts may suggest, he 
declares that man must remain agnostic. 
Comte, moreover, maintained that man- 
kind passes through certain phases of 
thought in an upward development. 
These phases are three in number, the 
theological, the metaphysical, and the 
positive, the latter being the final goal 
of knowledge. In the first stage, Comte 
says, phenomena are regarded as caused 
by wills similar to ours ; the progress of 
thought in this stage passes from a grossly 
superstitious fetichism, through polythe- 
ism, to the more refined form of monothe- 
ism. In the metaphysical stage, certain 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 101 

mental abstractions are held to constitute 
the power underlying all nature, such as 
the idea of force, of occult powers or vir- 
tues inherent in substances. In the third 
and advanced stage, Comte regards all 
knowledge as circumscribed by the gen- 
eral laws of science which have been 
experimentally determined, and which ac- 
count for the sequence of phenomena, the 
measurement of their intensity, and all 
their quantitative relations, but which, 
however, are silent concerning the under- 
lying ground of these phenomena, and their 
significance in the light of the purposes or 
ends which they subserve. The end of 
knowledge, according to Comte, is the 
more perfect systematization of the sci- 
ences, in which task all metaphysical pre- 
suppositions must be strenuously avoided. 
It is evident, however, that such proced- 
ure would leave no place for a philosophy 
of knowledge. 

The Nature of Knowledge. — A second 
problem is the nature of knowledge as 
the expression of reality. In what way 
is our knowledge related to reality? In 



102 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

what sense is the inner world of con- 
sciousness a real world? It is of su- 
preme importance that the student of 
philosophy should appreciate the nature 
of this problem, its many difficulties, and 
the main points at issue. To grasp appre- 
ciatively the difficulties of a problem, is 
the first step towards a solution. Let us, 
therefore, attempt a more detailed state- 
ment of this question, and the perplexi- 
ties which arise in its wake. 

Whatever our theory of the source of 
knowledge may be, we are constrained to 
recognize the senses as the organs of medi- 
ation between us and the external world. 
An outer stimulus is followed by a corre- 
sponding sensation. The sensation, how- 
ever, is not the stimulus, however much 
it may be modified in transmission through 
the neural circuit to the brain.; nor is the 
sensation a copy of the object which 
caused the stimulus. In vision, the outer 
stimulus is a vibratory movement in the 
ether, which is an invisible, highly elas- 
tic medium, filling all space and pene- 
trating all bodies. The corresponding 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 103 

perception, however, is of an object pos- 
sessing definite color, form, and location 
in space. The difference between the 
colors red and green, as regards the 
stimulus, is a difference in the number of 
vibrations in a second. In the finished 
perception it is a qualitative difference; 
as regards the stimulus, however, it is 
quantitative. 

Here, in the problem of knowledge, 
emerges the old difficulty, which we 
found in the problem of ontology, the 
evident gap between physical antecedents 
and the psychical consequents. In the 
problem of knowledge, the question which 
confronts us is, how far the inner percep- 
tion is a true representation of the world 
of reality. Are the relations of time and 
space, of cause and effect, merely pro- 
jections of the mind upon the field of 
perception ? May it not be true that our 
perceptions which seem to be perceptions 
of things are, after all, only mental expe- 
riences which have no corresponding real- 
ity, or a reality different from our mind's 
representation of it? May it not be pos- 



104 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

sible even that the world of experience 
manifested in consciousness as a world of 
order, of law, of harmony, and of beauty, 
is a work solely of the constructive pro- 
cesses of the mind, so that a chaos without 
is transmuted into a cosmos within, as 
irregular, broken bits of glass in a kalei- 
doscope appear to the viewing eye as elabo- 
rate designs, accurately proportioned and 
exquisitely colored? We find these diffi- 
culties graphically portrayed in the cele- 
brated allegory of Plato : — 

"'Let me show you, in a figure, how 
far our nature is enlightened or unen- 
lightened: Behold! human beings living 
in an underground den, which has a 
mouth open towards the light, and reach- 
ing all along the den; they have been 
here from their childhood, and have their 
legs and necks chained so that they can- 
not move, and can only see before them; 
for the chains are arranged in such a 
manner as to prevent them from turning 
round their heads. Above and behind 
them the light of a fire is blazing at a 
distance, and between the fire and the 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 105 

prisoners there is a raised way; and you 
will see, if you look, a low wall built 
along the way, like the screen which 
marionette players have in front of them, 
over which they show the puppets.' 

"'I see.' 

"'And do you see,' I said, 'men pass- 
ing along the wall, some apparently talk- 
ing and others silent, carrying vessels and 
statues and figures of animals, made of 
wood and stone and various materials, and 
which appear over the wall ? ' 

"'You have shown me a strange image, 
and they are strange prisoners.' 

"'Like ourselves,' I replied, 'and they 
see only their own shadows, or the shad- 
ows of one another, which the fire throws 
on the opposite wall of the cave ? ' 

"'True,' he said; 'how could they see 
anything but the shadows, if they were 
never allowed to move their heads?' 

"'And of the objects which are being 
carried in like manner they would only 
see the shadows?' 

"'Yes,' he said. 
And if they were able to talk with 



(( ( 



a 6 



106 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

one another, would tliey not suppose that 
they were naming what was actually before 
them ? ' 

Very true. ' 

And suppose, further, that the prison 
had an echo which came from the other 
side, would they not be sure to fancy that 
the voice which they heard was that of a 
passing shadow ? ' 

"'No question,' he replied. 

"'Beyond question,' I said, 'the truth 
would be to them just nothing but the 
shadows of the images.'"^ 

This is the problem, therefore, — 
whether our world is made up of shad- 
ows of images merely, or whether it is 
a world of reality? The answer to this 
question may be of a psychological, logi- 
cal, or metaphysical nature. The psy- 
chological answer is satisfied with an 
accurate account of the process by which 
the outer world becomes an object of con- 
sciousness, tracing the external stimuli 
through the nerve channels to the brain 

1 The Bepuhlic, VH, 514. 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 107 

tracts and to the final mental reaction 
in consciousness. From the standpoint of 
special psychology, no other answer seems 
relevant. 

The logical answer is, that the world 
within and the world without are corre- 
sponding worlds, so that there can be a 
constant basis of reference. The idea of 
invariability, as characterizing the world 
of experience, is a necessary logical postu- 
late, for, without it, inference would be 
impossible. The world, as we know it, 
must be a world of uniformity, or else it 
would be impossible to reason, as we do 
in logical inference, from the functions 
of a part to the nature of the whole, or 
vice versa. 

The metaphysical answers are two, form- 
ing the opposed schools of thought, real- 
ism and idealism. 

Realism, — Realism, or, as it is gener- 
ally styled, natural realism, is that the- 
ory which regards the world of perception 
as a true representation of the world with- 
out, and insists also that the world with- 
out has a real existence, and that its 



108 THE PKOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

phenomena continue to manifest them- 
selves in their physical actions and reac- 
tions even when the perceiving mind 
ceases to observe them. 

Realism is of two kinds, a naive, and 
a critical realism. The former is the re- 
sult of a common-sense judgment which, 
without reflection, accepts a theory of 
crude dualism, and does not seek to go 
behind the appearance of an external 
world without and an internal world 
within. It accepts the facts, as they 
seem to be, from the standpoint of a 
practical mind which is but slightly in- 
trospective. Critical realism discrimi- 
nates between the crude data of perception 
and the completed product to which the 
mind is a contributing factor which must 
be reckoned with in framing a theory of 
knowledge. It nevertheless maintains a 
dualism between mind and matter, al- 
though of a more refined type, and insists 
upon the reality of an objective world 
which is independent of the mind, which 
may or may not observe it. 

The theory of realism is associated with 



THE PKOBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 109 

the Scottish school of philosophy, whose 
founder was Thomas Reid, followed by- 
Oswald, Beattie, Dugald Stewart, and 
McCosh. 

Idealism. — Idealism insists that the 
only world which is known to us is the 
world which appears in consciousness. 
Whether there is an external world cor- 
responding, is a matter of surmise, but 
never of certainty. 

One of the most eminent of the ideal- 
ists. Bishop Berkeley, declared that noth- 
ing exists except as it is an object of 
perception. Esse est percipi. Locke had 
drawn the distinction between primary 
and secondary qualities of matter; the 
former, as extension, weight, etc., he re- 
garded as objective qualities inhering in 
the object perceived; while the latter, the 
secondary qualities, as color, taste, smell, 
were subjective reactions and not qualities 
inherent in the object. Bishop Berkeley 
went a step farther, and said, that as the 
color red is an affection of the sensibili- 
ties and not resident in the object, so, 
also, form, weight, and force are all 



110 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

subjective constructions with no corre- 
sponding essences that can be regarded as 
constituting an object external to the 
subject, i.e. the perceiving self, or Ego. 
Hume carried Berkeley's argument a step 
farther still, in insisting that even the 
varied subjective manifestations appear- 
ing in consciousness were mere phenomena 
which possess no more trustworthy assur- 
ances of reality than do the phenomena 
of the world of matter. Hume pushed 
Berkeley's argument to the extreme of 
absolute scepticism. 

Kant's phenomenalism is, in a way, 
a 'form of idealism in that he held that 
all things, whether material or mental, 
appear as mere phenomena, adding, how- 
ever, that behind every phenomenon there 
must be a corresponding noumenon, that 
is, a real entity, referred to by Kant as 
the thing-in-itself to distinguish it from 
the thing-as-it-appears. This thing-in- 
itself, however, can never be known; it 
is the unknown quantity behind every 
phenomenon, the x of the equation of 
knowledge. In Lange's History of Mate- 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 111 

rialism he cites Kant's doctrine in sup- 
port of materialism, inasmuch as a denial 
of any reality that can be known leaves 
only the material appearances as the be- 
ginning and end of our knowledge. It 
must be noticed however, in passing, that 
Kant, in his Critique of Practical Reason^ 
restores the world which, in his Critique 
of Pure Reason^ he destroys. For Kant 
declares that in the intuitions of con- 
science, which are regulative of the will, 
that is, of the practical reason, there is 
evidence of a world of law and of order, 
which pure reason, unaided, is not able 
to prove. Kant assigns the primacy to 
the will and not to theoretical reason. It 
is the will, he urges, which is directly 
conscious of a law which imposes obliga- 
tion and responsibility, and, therefore, so 
far forth, gives assurance that the world 
in which the will must fulfil its obliga- 
tions must be an orderly, self-consistent, 
law-obeying world, or otherwise law, obli- 
gation, duty, obedience, could have no 
meaning and no field or scope for their 
activities. 



112 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Another form of idealism is the doctrine 
of the relativity of knowledge, as ex- 
pressed by Sir William Hamilton. " Our 
whole knowledge of mind and of matter 
is relative — conditioned — relatively con- 
ditioned. Of things absolutely or in 
themselves, be they external, be they in- 
ternal, we know nothing, or know them 
only as incognizable; and become aware 
of their incomprehensible existence only 
as this is indirectly and accidentally 
revealed to us through certain qualities 
related to our faculties of knowledge. 
All that we know is, therefore, phenome- 
nal — phenomenal of the unknown."^ 

In Kant's phenomenalism as well as in 
Hamilton's doctrine of the relativity of 
knowledge we find the same assumption 
that, inasmuch as the object perceived 
sustains certain relations to the subject 
perceiving, therefore the perception itself 
must be colored by the nature of the sub- 
ject, and the object of the perception there- 
fore is not apprehended simply as it is in 

1 Metaphysics, I, p. 163. 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 113 

itself. In other words, we look at Nature 
through the colored glasses of the Ego, 
the self. The Scottish philosophy, on the 
other hand, took the position, that while 
certain principles of our mind are opera- 
tive in interpreting the nature and sig- 
nificance of every perception, we are 
nevertheless not deceived in such inter- 
pretation, inasmuch as there is a com- 
plete harmony between our nature and 
the nature of things.^ * 

Prof. T. H. Green has further developed 
this idea and given it more exact philo- 
sophical expression in declaring that the 
spiritual principle in man, constituting 
the unity of his consciousness, is one 
with the spiritual principle in the world, 
which constitutes the law, the order, and 
the harmony of the universe. The syn- 
thesis of these principles in perception 
assures the reality of our world of knowl- 
edge. ^ 

It must be observed, moreover, that our 

1 On the Scottish Philosophy^ Andrew Seth, pp. 
157-168. 

2 Prolegomena to Ethics, Book I, chap. i. 



114 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

knowledge of phenomena is still real 
knowledge. There is a sneer in the 
phrase "mere phenomena" which is mis- 
leading. Objects in themselves and ob- 
jects as they appear are not necessarily 
two distinct things. The thing-in-itself 
can manifest itself only through its attri- 
butes and through the manifold relations 
which these attributes sustain. It is a 
violent assumption that the thing-in-itself 
is one thing, and the manifestation of it 
something different, and therefore illusive. 
We are rather to think, with Hegel, that 
"thoughts do not stand between us and 
things shutting us from things, they 
rather shut us together with them." And 
it may be added, that the resulting knowl- 
edge is, therefore, of real things in a real 
world. 

Absolute Idealism. — The doctrines of 
Hegel, as well as those of Fichte and Schel- 
ling, are a form of so-called absolute ideal- 
ism. These doctrines, however they may 
differ in the details of representation, rest 
upon the identity hypothesis concerning 
the relation of matter to mind, which hy- 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 115 

pothesis, it will be recalled, regards mat- 
ter and mind as related phases of one and 
the same underlying substance which uni- 
fies the two seemingly discrepant phenom- 
ena in their mutual interaction ; moreover, 
absolute idealism considers this unifying 
substance to be a spiritual principle, 
which is at the same time the absolute 
principle of the universe. The antithesis 
of subject and object in the process of 
perception is resolved in a higher synthe- 
sis of a universal consciousness, of which 
subject and object are different modes. 
In Germany, the doctrines of Spinoza and 
a pantheistic philosophy were revived 
under the influence of Lessing and Her- 
der. After Kant, we find Hegel, Fichte, 
and Schelling developing these ideas in 
various forms. Fichte emphasized the 
subjective, spiritual principle as the pri- 
mal and all-comprehending essence of the 
universe which manifests itself in the 
various activities of the human will, con- 
serving law, order, and moral force. On 
the other hand, Schelling insisted upon 
an objective idealism, as well as a sub- 



116 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

jective, the manifestation in nature of 
the spiritual principle, whereby the ideal 
finds expression in the concrete real, the 
two being essentially one. Hegel's ideal- 
ism is a logical system based upon the 
proposition that the necessities of thought 
determine rigidly the necessities of being. 
His dictum is that the rational is the 
real. The necessary thought relations 
therefore determine a definite programme 
to which the actual phenomena of the 
universe, in their unfolding, conform. 
Everything that exists was originally an 
idea in the Divine Mind. The Absolute 
Being, or the Idea, as Hegel designates 
the supreme principle of all being, mani- 
fests Himself in nature, in man, in his- 
tory, art, law, ethics, religion, and all the 
manifold phases of existence. The sys- 
tems of absolute idealism, it will be seen, 
are essentially pantheistic, panlogistic, or 
pamphysical, according as there is em- 
phasized severally the personal nature of 
the All-Being, or the nature of the same 
regarded as impersonal reason, or as a 
material force. 



THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE 117 

In the philosophy of Herbart, we find 
a natural reaction from the dogmas of 
Hegel; for he insists that things cannot 
be identified with thought, but that they 
exist independent of the reason which 
cognizes them. The business of philoso- 
phy, according to him therefore, is to 
seek a more exact and adequate formula- 
tion of the concepts which express the 
underlying principles of the different sci- 
ences. Herbart recognizes a number of 
distinct realities in the world, and these 
it is our duty to know and understand. 
The tendency of thought to react from an 
absolute idealism is a most natural one 
and has many illustrations ; on the other 
hand, a tendency towards a crude realism, 
and a radical dualism, meets the same 
reactive tendency in the opposite direc- 
tion. The truth must lie somewhere 
between the two extremes. 



CHAPTER VII 

THE PEOBLEM OF REASOI^ 

THE normative sciences, logic, ethics, 
and aesthetics, form a single group 
in virtue of the common feature that each 
refers to a norm, or standard, by which 
reason, conduct, or taste is to be judged. 
We find ourselves in the realm of law; 
its interpretation and application consti- 
tute in this sphere the offices of phi- 
losophy. 

Of the normative sciences, logic is the 
one which deals with the problem of 
reason. Reason may be regarded in the 
special significance of the term as equiva- 
lent to the process of reasoning, and there- 
fore as synonymous with inference, one of 
the departments of logic proper. Reason, 
however, may have a more general and 
comprehensive meaning as synonymous 
with the understanding, and including the 

concept and the judgment as well as in- 

118 



THE PROBLEM OF REASON 119 

ference. The science of logic, therefore, 
embraces these three modes of thought, 
the concept, judgment, and inference. 

The Concept, — Of these the concept 
is the simplest form; the judgment is a 
developed form of the concept, and in- 
ference, a further development of the 
judgment. Moreover, back of the con- 
cept there is still a simpler psychical 
phenomenon, namely, the percept which 
forms the foundation of the concept. 
The percept is the finished product in 
the process of perception. When a num- 
ber of percepts are observed to possess 
certain common characteristics, the mind 
seizes upon these common marks and 
frames them into one general idea, which 
represents a class or a group of objects of 
which each separate percept in question 
stands as an individual example. After 
we have perceived a number of roses, we 
will find that the resulting percepts are 
distinctly different as regards size, color, 
fragrance, and many other qualities. Each 
individual rose preserves a marked indi- 
viduality, and yet from the group of 



120 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

differing individual cases, the mind con- 
structs a general idea of a rose which 
embodies the common marks, or general 
characteristic features, of all the roses 
which we have ever observed. The gen- 
eral idea is not visualized as a picture in 
the mind's field of vision; it is intellect- 
ually, not sensibly, discerned. The Ger- 
man word for concept, Begriff^ gives the 
significance of the term more strikingly; 
it is the mind's hegreifen^ the grasping 
the common and essential characteristics 
of a class-idea, and holding them together. 
The concept, by itself however, is a float- 
ing idea in the mind, needing an anchor- 
age to some definite and explicit form of 
thought which we find in the judgment. 
The judgment is the direct reference of a 
concept to reality; it is the saying some- 
thing about the concept in the form of an 
assertion which may be either affirmative 
or negative. The judgment is a state- 
ment that the concept in the mind actu- 
ally describes and represents the world of 
reality as we know it. The judgment, all 
metals are conductors, signifies that the 



THE PROBLEM OF REASON 121 

attribute of conductivity is so essential to 
the integrity of our idea of a metal as to 
form one concept with it, to which reality 
in general must always correspond, to the 
extent that wherever in the world of real- 
ity we find a metal, we will always find 
the attribute of conductivity. While judg- 
ment is a direct reference of a concept to 
reality, inference, on the other hand, may 
be defined a^ an indirect reference of a 
concept to reality. I assert that a hand- 
ful of black sand contains iron; I vent- 
ure this assertion because I have held 
a magnet in close proximity, and imme- 
diately the sand particles attached them- 
selves to it. My knowledge in such an 
experiment is gained indirectly and there- 
fore is of the nature of inference ; for that 
part of reality under investigation is char- 
acterized by me as containing iron by 
virtue of two judgments, and therefore 
discovered in a roundabout way. The 
one judgment is of a fact, that the mag- 
net did actually attract the sand parti- 
cles, and the other is a judgment of a 
universal nature, namely, that magnets 



122 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

will attract only substances of iron. 
Through these judgments, therefore, we 
reach, by an indirect process, the conclu- 
sion or inference that the sand in ques- 
tion contains iron particles. 

The three divisions of logic, the con- 
cept, judgment, and inference, each present 
certain problems of general philosophical 
interest in addition to the more special 
problems of a distinctively logical nat- 
ure. 

The consideration of the theory of the 
concept suggests a question concerning the 
nature of the universal idea which a con- 
cept expresses, — that is, in such general 
ideas as rose, dog, man, in what sense 
may these terms be regarded as univer- 
sals? It is an old controversy, this sub- 
ject of the nature of universals, waged 
with much bitterness and tedium among 
the schoolmen of the middle ages. 

There are three answers to this ques- 
tion, that of realism, of nominalism, and 
of conceptualism. 

Realism. — In this connection, realism 
is used in quite a different sense from the 



\ THE PROBLEM OF REASON 123 

term realism with which we are familiar 
in the problem of knowledge. The real- 
ist, as regards the nature of the universal, 
insisted that corresponding to every gen- 
eral class notion, there was a real being 
in which all the common marks which 
constituted the class characteristics were 
actually embodied. The general notion, 
man, therefore, would be incarnated in 
some essence possessing all the salient 
features by virtue of which man is man, 
and which exist therefore as an archetype 
of all mankind. The most eminent rep- 
resentative of this theory was Anselm. 
His famous argument on the being of 
God was based on realistic preconcep- 
tions. "When Anselm believed that with 
the help of the mere conception of God 
he could arrive at the proof of His exist- 
ence, he exemplified in a typical manner 
the fundamental idea of realism which 
ascribed to conceptions without any re- 
gard to their genesis and basis in the 
human mind the character of truth, i,e. 
of Reality. It was on this ground alone 
that he could attempt to reason from the 



124 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

psychical to the metaphysical reality of 
the conception of God."^ 

From this quotation, it will be seen 
that the realist, in the discussion of the 
schoolmen, was a veritable idealist, ac- 
cording to the modern terminology in 
usage in the discussion of the theory of 
knowledge, for the scholastic realist main- 
tained that reality could be found only in 
ideas. 

Nominalism. — On the other hand, how- 
ever, the nominalist insisted that the uni- 
versal was merely a name, and that all the 
common attributes of a class gather round 
the name as a nucleus, and being thus 
held together in common verbal associa- 
tion, are presented to the mind, when oc- 
casion offers, through this verbal medium. 
Roscellinus is the chief representative of 
nominalism. 

Conceptualism. — The conceptualist 
urged that the individuals of a class 
have more than the name in common; 
that they have the name plus the sig- 

1 Windelband, A History of Philosophy , p. 293. 



THE PROBLEM OF REASON 125 

nificance of which the name itself is a 
symbol. The mind's idea, the concept, 
is regarded by the conceptualist therefore 
as the universal ; of this doctrine Abelard 
is the mediaeval champion. 

Plato's doctrine of ideas is often referred 
to as Platonic realism, — but realism how- 
ever, in the scholastic significance of the 
word, and therefore actually an idealistic 
theory. According to Plato, every uni- 
versal idea has a real counterpart in the 
world of reality. Commenting upon Pla- 
tonism, Mr. Pater remarks : — 

"It was like a recrudescence of polythe- 
ism in that abstract world; a return of 
many gods of Homer veiled now as ab- 
stract notions, Love, Fear, Confidence, 
and the like; and as such the modern 
anthropologist, our student of the natural 
history of man, would rank the Platonic 
theory as but a form of what he calls 
'animism.' Animism, that tendency to 
locate the movements of a soul like our 
own in eyevj object, almost in every cir- 
cumstance, which impresses one with a 
sense of power, is a condition of mind. 



126 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

of which the simplest illustration is prim- 
itive man adoring, as a divine being en- 
dowed with will, the meteoric stone that 
came rushing from the sky. That condi- 
tion ^survives,' however, in the negro, who 
thinks the discharging gun a living creat- 
ure; as it survives also, more subtly, in 
the culture of Wordsworth and Shelley, 
for whom clouds and peaks are kindred 
spirits ; in the pantheism of Goethe ; and 
in Schelling, who formulates that panthe- 
ism as a philosophic, a Platonic theory, — 
such 'animistic ' instinct was, certainly, 
a natural element in Plato's mental con- 
stitution, — the instinctive effort to find 
anima^ the conditions of personality, in 
whatever preoccupied his mind."^ 

I have quoted from Mr. Pater somewhat 
at length in order to illustrate a tendency 
of thought which has characterized the 
ancient, mediaeval, and modern philo- 
sophical speculations alike. 

The PhiloBophy of Judgment. — The 
problem which arises in the theory of 

1 Flato and Flatonism^ Walter Pater, p. 153. 



THE PROBLEM OF REASON 127 

judgment is suggested in the definition 
of judgment itself; judgment being the 
direct reference of the concept to reality, 
we are confronted with the familiar epis- 
temological difficulty as to the precise 
nature of the relation of the idea in the 
mind to reality. The problem in its 
strictly logical significance is, however, 
somewhat simplified inasmuch as logic 
has to do only with the content of con- 
sciousness. A judgment asserts as true 
certain concepts; truth, in this connec- 
tion, means a correspondence to facts, and 
the facts with which logic deals are the 
elements of reality as they appear in con- 
sciousness. They are thought-facts. 

The so-called thing-in-itself is never an 
object of consciousness, and, therefore, the 
world of reality, of which our judgments 
testify, is the world as we know it. And 
this world is characterized by a uniform 
experience, so that we are convinced that 
there must be a universal validity in all 
relations once conclusively established and 
adequately formulated in our judgments. 
This universality may be described as an 



128 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

identity in the midst of differences, that 
is, the world of knowledge is indefinitely 
variable in its manifold manifestations, 
and yet throughout all the possible va- 
riations of experience there remain cer- 
tain constants. These constants form the 
ground of our judgments; they are de- 
pendable, so that upon them we may build 
various thought structures, with the ab- 
solute confidence which is inspired by the 
conviction that we are logical creatures, 
and that our world of knowledge is a self- 
consistent, uniformly related whole. We 
believe, therefore, that our judgments 
once true will be found always true; in 
the midst of many shifting uncertainties, 
this, at least, is solid ground. 

The Philosophy of Inference. — The prob- 
lem which presents itself for consideration 
in the theory of inference relates to the 
ground upon which the inferential process 
is based. What is the warrant for a pro- 
cedure in inference from something known 
to an assertion concerning the unknown? 
We found that the essence of inference 
lies in an indirect reference of a concept 



THE PEOBLEM OF REASON 129 

to reality ; but what ground have we for an 
indirect reference of our ideas to a sphere 
of reality which does not lie directly 
within our ken? The answer to this 
question Ave may find in the nature of 
our body of knowledge considered as a 
whole. We must regard our knowledge 
in its totality as forming a system of in- 
terrelated and orderly connected parts, so 
that a knowledge of any part necessitates 
a knowledge of all its nearly related parts. 
The known which is given in con- 
sciousness, and the unknown which is 
inferred, must so hang together that the 
one implies the other. From the seed, 
we infer a certain kind of flower, or of 
grain, which the future in time reveals, 
thereby verifying the early prophecy which 
was born of reason. Regarding, therefore, 
the world of our knowledge as a system 
of interrelated parts, the characteristic 
and essential features of the system must 
remain the same from time to time; 
otherwise inference would be impossible. 
These relations may be depended upon 
so far as they hold universally. The dis- 



130 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

covery of a truth, therefore, is the discov- 
ery of a relation which holds universally; 
and this is the significance of the phrase, 
once true, always true. A fact, however, 
is a particular happening without reference 
to the conditions which produced it, and 
with no analysis of their nature so as to 
reveal the existing relations of a univer- 
sal character which lie at the basis of the 
fact in question. A formulation of these 
unive'rsal relations constitutes the general 
truth of which the fact is a concrete par- 
ticular example. 

Deduction and Induction. — In infer- 
ence, therefore, when we have given a 
knowledge of the universal relations which 
characterize any system as it always ap- 
pears in consciousness, then we may infer 
certain particular facts which such uni- 
versal relations necessitate. Such a proc- 
ess of reasoning is known as deduction. 
This is the logic of Aristotle. If, on the 
other hand, however, we have given a 
number of facts, and proceed from them 
to infer the universal characteristics and 
general features of the system in which 



THE PROBLEM OF KEASON 131 

alone such facts could possibly inhere, then 
we have a process of inference known as 
induction. Francis Bacon is the father of 
inductive logic. If from our knowledge 
of the planetary system we infer the par- 
ticular position of sun, moon, and earth at 
any given time, as in the calculation of an 
eclipse, the procedure is deductive. But, 
if we investigate the several movements 
of the different planets, and from them 
infer the necessary nature of the system 
of which they are parts, we have the 
process of induction. 

The Problem of Causation, — The uni- 
versal relations existing between parts of 
one and the same harmonious system, and 
furnishing a basis for our inferences, are 
largely the relations of cause and effect. 
The doctrine of causation presents a prob- 
lem of general philosophical interest. This 
problem is virtually a special case of the 
general problem concerning the empirical, 
or the a priori origin of knowledge. Is 
the idea of causation the result of experi- 
ence or is it prior to experience? Such 
is the problem of causation, in its gen- 



132 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

eral philosophical significance ; in its more 
strictly logical bearings, the essential ques- 
tion seems to be, "Is there an element of 
invariability in causation?" The invari- 
ability of the cause and effect relation, 
that like antecedents under precisely the 
same conditions produce like effects, alone 
makes inference possible. General phi- 
losophy may discuss the question as to the 
origin of our assurances of the existence 
of such a constant element in the world 
of experience ; that is, whether our belief 
in the uniformity of nature and conscious- 
ness arises empirically or in an a 'priori 
manner. Logic, however, demands only 
that the fact of this invariability be 
assured. 

Reasoning, if it is possible at all, must 
assume as a fundamental postulate, there- 
fore, that nature, as it is represented in 
our world of knowledge, is uniform and 
self-consistent throughout. 

Logic and Epistemology. — In the theory 
of logic, the problems are largely those 
which confront us in the theory of knowl- 
edge. Indeed, with some philosophical 



THE PROBLEM OF BEASON 133 

writers, especially in recent times, the 
study of logic has been merged in the 
science of epistemology. Logic, how- 
ever, may not be thus absorbed. It is 
related most intimately to epistemology, 
but retains its individual nature as a 
distinct philosophical discipline. Logic 
in its scope embraces a large field which 
is foreign to the general subject matter 
of epistemology; for logic is a technical 
science, treating not merely the philo- 
sophical ground of the conceptual and 
inferential processes, but developing a 
method of discovering and formulating 
universal relations, which, in turn, may 
be applied to the determination of par- 
ticular problems in concrete cases. Logic 
provides also, on its practical side, scien- 
tific methods of investigation, rules of 
experimentation, and laws which govern 
the interpretation of results. There is 
consequently not only a philosophy of our 
reasoning powers, there is an art of rea- 
soning as well. 



CHAPTER VIII 

the problem of conscieitce 
("ethics") 

THE problem of conscience falls within 
the province of ethics, and is con- 
cerned with the inquiry as to the origin 
and nature of the principles which under- 
lie right conduct. The term, Ethics, is 
from the Greek, r)9iicd^ meaning customs, 
or manners. The term, morals, is from 
the Latin mores^ which has a like sig- 
nification; so also, the German word for 
morals, Sitten, In the growth of lan- 
guage, the general meaning of morals has 
become restricted so as to apply solely to 
the specific sphere of commendable cus- 
toms. A radical distinction between cus- 
toms right and wrong has thus become 
crystallized in language. The import of 
this is significant, for it indicates a natu- 
ral trend of thought which differentiates 

conduct as right and wrong. The ques- 

134 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 135 

tion naturally suggests itself, What is 
the ground of this distinction ? A philo- 
sophic spirit refuses to accept this distinc- 
tion as a matter-of-course or to regard it 
as one of the commonplaces of our mental 
store, which is to be assumed and not 
explained. A reason for this classifica- 
tion of conduct is naturally demanded, 
and in the various attempts to render a 
satisfactory account of so evident and 
universal a distinction, two tendencies of 
thought are evident. The one would ex- 
plain the recognized difference between 
right and wrong conduct as an immedi- 
ate deliverance of consciousness ; that is, 
knowledge which is intuitively discerned. 
The opposed school of thought would in- 
sist that such a distinction is obviously 
the outcome of experience, and the grad- 
ual growth of an ethical consciousness 
which is capable of discerning ever more 
clearly between right and wrong, the good 
and the evil. We are, therefore, at the 
very threshold of ethical inquiry, con- 
fronted with the general problem of knowl- 
edge in one of its special phases, namely: 



136 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Is the source of knowledge to be re- 
garded as a priori or a posteriori? in- 
tuitive or empirical? Here the problem 
concerns the ethical consciousness solely, 
and not consciousness in general. 

The a priori point of view leads to 
certain characteristic conclusions, as also, 
on the other hand, the empirical point of 
view. One's general philosophical posi- 
tion, therefore, will naturally determine 
in advance the lines of attempted solution 
as regards the more special problem which 
arises in the sphere of ethics. As to the 
origin of the ethical concept, there are 
four distinct schools of thought: the in- 
tuitional, transcendental, utilitarian, and 
evolutional. Of these, the two first trace 
the ethical ideas, which are the present 
possession of mankind, to an a priori 
source ; the two last refer the same to an 
empirical source. 

The intuitional position regards the 
ethical concept of the right in distinc- 
tion from the wrong as innate, and prior 
to the knowledge which is derived from 
experience, and therefore as superior to, 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 137 

and regulative of, the suggestions of sense 
in appetite, passion, or desire. The tran- 
scendental theory, or transcendental evo- 
lution, insists that there is a gradual 
unfolding of the ethical concept in the 
development of mental life, but that 
this evolution, however, has proceeded 
from certain fundamental and germinal 
ideas of consciousness, and not from the 
data of sense-perception. The universal 
consciousness comes to its gradual mani- 
festation in the developing conscience of 
each individual. This development is 
transcendental in the sense that it occurs 
in a sphere above the natural series of 
sensuous experiences. The utilitarian 
position regards all our ethical ideas as 
the result of an experience which indi- 
cates the kind of conduct which in times 
past has proved useful in producing 
pleasure and avoiding pain. The idea 
of utility, whence the name of the school, 
is thus associated with a pleasure-pain 
theory as to the ends of conduct, and the 
impulses to action. The evolutional the- 
ory, or the theory of natural evolution, as 



138 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

it is sometimes styled to distinguish it 
from transcendental evolution, differs from 
utilitarianism in insisting that the ideas 
of utility cannot form and develop in the 
brief lifetime of an individual, but neces- 
sitate a race experience which in the 
individual consciousness appears as a 
hereditary possession, but with the seem- 
ing nature and force of an intuition of 
right and wrong. 

The above are the broad and general 
distinctions in ethical theory. There are, 
however, other questions which emerge 
within the bounds of the different schools 
themselves, and which arise out of the 
relations which these schools sustain to 
each other. 

Intuitionalism. — The intuitional school 
is divided into a right and left wing ac- 
cording to the answer which is given to 
the question concerning the nature of our 
moral intuitions : Are they judgments of 
right and wrong, or are they feelings 
which discriminate between the right and 
wrong ? Among the intuitionalists, there- 
fore, we have this division, into the opposed 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 139 

camps of the intellectualists and the sen- 
timentalists. The former say that we 
know the right as a matter of pure intel- 
lection; the latter, however, declare that 
we possess a faculty which is able to 
sense the right, and that just as we are 
able to appreciate the flavor of a fruit or 
the fragrance of a flower, so there is 
this extraordinary moral sense which di- 
vines the right, and appreciates its worth. 
The intellectualists are represented by the 
British moralists, Clarke, Cumberland, 
Cudworth, and Price; also by Kant. 
The sentimental school is represented by 
Adam Smith, Hutcheson, Shaftesbury, and 
Bishop Butler. 

The tendency in modern writers of the 
intuitional school is to unite the cognitive 
and emotional elements so that the con- 
science is regarded as a synthesis of the 
two. This is the characteristic feature of 
Dr. Martineau's ethical system, in which 
conscience is represented as an arbiter of 
conflicting desires, so that, when the mind 
judges in favor of a higher impulse in the 
presence of a lower there is right action, 



140 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

but when the lower is judged superior in 
the presence of a higher impulse there is 
wrong action. 

The strength of the intuitional position 
lies in its insistence upon an original con- 
cept of oughtness which renders the ethi- 
cal ideal obligatory. That which is true 
to reason becomes law unto the will. 
Right is chosen for right's sake. The 
categorical imperative, to use Kant's fa- 
mous phrase, becomes the corner-stone of 
the intuitional structure. An imperative 
which is categorical is a command uttered 
without reservation or condition; when 
duty lays upon us the burden of obliga- 
tion, no reason need be assigned, no re- 
ward offered. It is the old-time rigorism 
of the Stoics. Kant has forcibly expressed 
this thought in his eloquent apostrophe : — 

"O duty! Thou great, thou exalted 
name! Wondrous thought, that workest 
neither by fond insinuation, nor by flat- 
tery, nor by any threat, but merely by 
holding up thy naked law in the soul, 
and so extorting for thyself always rev- 
erence, if not obedience, before whom all 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 141 

appetites are dumb, however secretly they 
rebel ! Whence thy original ? " 

The position, however, where the intui- 
tionalist is especially exposed to attack, 
is his claim of universality for the ethical 
concept. For this concept being intui- 
tive, it must follow that it is the common 
possession of mankind, and therefore must 
possess universal validity. In opposition 
to such a claim, it is urged that there is 
an evident diversity of opinion concern- 
ing moral judgments, and that the fact of 
moral progress from the crude ideas of the 
right in the savage mind to the highly 
refined moral sentiments and practices of 
a civilized community cannot be harmo- 
nized with an intuitive basis of morality. 
The intuitionalist's explanation of these 
evident difficulties is, in general, an ap- 
plication of a Kantian distinction to the 
problem in question; namely, as regards 
the form of the ethical concept, there 
are present certain constant and universal 
characteristics, but as to the precise con- 
tent of the same in any special circum- 
stance, there may be variations within 



142 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

certain limits. That we are under a 
moral law imposing obligation upon our 
wills, it is held we do not need to wait 
for experience to teach us; experience, 
however, does instruct us as to the appro- 
priateness and the validity of applying 
such a law to concrete cases. 

Transcendentalism. — The transcenden- 
tal school of ethics is characterized by 
the general features of the larger philo- 
sophical system of which it is a part. 
That larger system regards the world, 
nature, man, history, science, art, reli- 
gion, and, in a word, the totality of all 
the possible phases of being as the mani- 
festation in continuous development of 
the universal reason, which is operative 
in and through all things. The outer 
form is the universe, the inner architec- 
tonic spirit is the creative and sustaining 
power of the supreme Being. 

The moral consciousness of man is there- 
fore to be regarded as one phase of the uni- 
versal manifestation of the World-Spirit, 
the eternal consciousness. Among the 
many possible causes of conduct at any 



THE PKOBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 143 

one time in a man's experience, there is 
always one which is preeminently the best 
because it perfectly mirrors the mind of 
the absolute spirit. It is the privilege 
as well as the duty of the individual to 
know and to realize this best always and 
under all circumstances, and so fulfil in 
his history the complete potential of his 
being. The ethical doctrine of this school, 
in the words of Hegel, is, "Be a person, 
and respect others as persons," or, as it 
is otherwise expressed, as the ideal of 
"self-realization"; that is, make the most 
and best of self to the full measure of 
one's possibilities. This doctrine is some- 
times styled very appropriately the theory 
of perfection. The duty, however, of per- 
fecting oneself is complemented by the 
duty which is owing to one's fellows. 
Man is to develop his own personality to 
the full, and, in the doing of it, give 
scope and play to the development of 
other personalities which may be associ- 
ated with him in life's interests and 
activities. In this theory, the duties 
owing to self and the duties owing to 



144 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

others, are coordinated by the profound 
principle, that each individual conscious- 
ness is a part of the eternal conscious- 
ness, and that, therefore, we are one with 
our fellows by virtue of a common rela- 
tion to the central source of life and 
thought. Under this aspect, the phrase, 
the solidarity of mankind, takes on a new 
and deeper significance. In the spirit of 
the transcendental theory of ethics. Pro- 
fessor Green has summarized the content 
of the ethical ideal as a "will to know 
what is true, to make what is beautiful, 
to endure pain and fear, to resist the 
allurements of pleasure in the interests 
of some form of society." 

There is a danger in this theory, how- 
ever, despite its high ideal, that the self 
which is to be realized, being a manifes- 
tation solely of the eternal conscious- 
ness, may prove to be not a real self 
with a distinct individuality, but only 
the semblance of a separate personality, 
which is to be reabsorbed in the Abso- 
lute. The command, therefore, to realize 
self cannot be a real command if there 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIEKCE 145 

is not a real self to whom it can be ad- 
dressed. 

Utilitarianism, — The school of utilita- 
rianism is concerned with the question of 
the good rather than the question of the 
right. What kind of conduct will pro- 
duce a real and lasting good? Such a 
question leads one into the sphere of a 
philosophy of pleasure. The foundation of 
such a philosophy must be discovered in 
the nature of that kind of pleasure whose 
realization characterizes normal conduct. 

The earliest form of the pleasure theory 
of life is found in the ancient Greek philo- 
sophical system known as Cyrenaicism, 
whose chief representative, Aristippus, 
taught that the end of conduct solely 
desirable was that which could be real- 
ized in the sphere of the sensibilities. 
Pleasure, with him, meant the pleasures 
of comfort and ease, of gratified appetite, 
and satisfied desire. It is the crudest 
form of the pleasure theorj^, known as 
pure hedonism, a term derived from the 
Greek 97802^77, pleasure. 

A more serious consideration, however, 



146 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

forced itself upon the Greek mind. Epi- 
curus regarded pleasure as an idea which 
must be refined in the crucible of reason. 
He insisted, therefore, that not all pleas- 
ures should be indiscriminately sought 
after as the impulse of the fleeting pres- 
ent might dictate, but only those pleas- 
ures which experience proves will leave 
no painful after-effects in their train, and 
which are wisely tempered by modera- 
tion. In short, the doctrine of Epicurus 
was, that the pursuit of pleasure must 
be guided by prudence. This idea be- 
came the fundamental article of belief 
in the early English utilitarianism as 
represented by Hobbes. Ethics is thus 
reduced to a "calculus of pleasure" from 
the standpoint of the individual, and is 
known as egoistic utilitarianism, or ego- 
istic hedonism. There was still a further 
differentiation as urged by Jeremy Ben- 
tham, which regards the pleasure to be 
sought in conduct as that which is con- 
ducive to the greatest happiness of the 
greatest number, and in this form the 
theory is known as altruistic hedonism, 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 147 

or altruistic utilitarianism. Bentham's 
fundamental conception of the relation of 
man to society was expressed in the prin- 
ciple that "every man should count for 
one, and no one for more than one." The 
political discussions of the day concern- 
ing the rights of man no doubt contrib- 
uted to the formulation of this dictum. 

A further contribution to the theory of 
utilitarianism we find in the writings of 
John Stuart Mill. He insists that in 
estimating the worth of any pleasure, one 
must consider not only the quantity of 
pleasure which may accrue either to the 
individual or to society, but also the 
quality of the pleasure as well, inasmuch 
as there is among pleasures a rank of 
nature. This qualitative difference, in- 
sisted upon by Mill, constituted a modi- 
fication of the utilitarian concept so 
radical that Mill has been very severely 
censured as a recreant to the sanctioned 
traditions of the utilitarian school. For 
the ethical concept, reduced to its lowest 
terms as experiences of pleasure and pain, 
may be determined in a quantitative man- 



148 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

ner by a purely psychological analysis, 
but psychological methods of interpreting 
experience cannot estimate differences of 
a qualitative nature, or determine the 
comparative worth of two pleasures upou 
a basis merely of quantitative value. A 
distinction between kinds of pleasure, as 
high or low, implies in itself a qualita- 
tive standard of comparison, that is, an 
ideal having certain constant and uni- 
versal characteristics, and this conception 
brings utilitarianism, in its most refined 
form, within the borderland at least, of 
the intuitional territory. 

The presence of these qualitative differ- 
ences among our various pleasures is im- 
plied in the expression, eudsemonism, — 
a term which is used in contrast with 
hedonism. The former signifies happi- 
ness in its most comprehensive sense, so 
that the pleasures of the intellect, the 
satisfaction arising from moral approba- 
tion, the glow of feeling in the conscious- 
ness of duty performed, all are embraced 
within the one concept as well as the 
lower round of sensuous pleasures, which 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 149 

can be assessed simply in quantitative 
terms. 

The Theory of Evolution, — This theory, 
in its ethical aspects, is a natural out- 
growth of utilitarianism. The two the- 
ories have this in common : they both hold 
that the distinction between right and 
wrong is derived from an original dis- 
tinction between pleasure-provoking and 
pain-producing phenomena. The point of 
departure, however, of the evolutionist 
is his insistence that the lifetime of an 
individual is too short to ground the 
association between pleasure giving and 
right actions, and that the derivation of 
the idea of right, from an original hedo- 
nistic source, is not as apparent as it would 
be if this derivation occurred in the brief 
span of an individual life. We have, 
therefore, Herbert Spencer's succinct ac- 
count of the evolution of the ethical 
concept in the following paragraph : " Ex- 
periences of utility organized and consoli- 
dated during all past generations of the 
human race, have been producing nervous 
modifications, which, by continued trans- 



150 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

mission and accumulation, have become 
in us certain faculties of moral intuition, 
certain emotions responding to right and 
wrong conduct, which have no apparent 
basis in the individual experience of 
utility. "1 

The claim of the evolutionist, there- 
fore, is that our knowledge of right and 
wrong is only a seemingly original pos- 
session of consciousness. It is urged, 
moreover, that our ancestors in imme- 
morial ages found certain actions to be 
advantageous, in the long run, to the 
individual, or to the family, or to the 
tribe. Therefore, in the tribes where 
such actions became established customs, 
or morals^ the advantages gained would 
result in the survival of the tribes when 
brought into competition or conflict with 
their less highly favored neighbors. The 
subsequent generations would inherit these 
life-conserving customs as predispositions 
of conduct, to which would attach them- 
selves naturally certain sentiments of 

1 Spencer's Letter to Mill ; Bain's Mental and 
Moral Science^ p. 721. 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 151 

fear, or reverence, or tribal loyalty; and 
thus there would develop a kind of mys- 
terious sanction whose very indefiniteness 
would grow finally into the seemingly 
sacred and authoritative voice of con- 
science. 

In the account of the evolution of con- 
science special stress is laid upon the 
duties owing to the tribe or to society. 
In the evolutional doctrine, society is re- 
garded as an organism, of which the indi- 
vidual is a living cell, so that the health 
of the whole depends upon the healthful 
functioning of every part. Leslie Stephen, 
a follower of Spencer, has most strenuously 
championed the doctrine of the social fac- 
tor as the essential characteristic of the 
ethical concept. He insists that the indi- 
vidual is one with the social organism, 
united with society of the past through 
the ties of heredity, and with society of the 
present through the manifold bonds of 
one's environment. "We are born,'' says 
Stephen, "not into a chaotic crowd, but 
into an organized army, and we must learn 
to keep step and rank, and to obey orders. " 



152 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

The evolutionist's view of the relation 
of man to his fellows differs substantially 
from that of the transcendentalist, in 
that the latter regards the bond of union, 
which is the basis of a common interest, 
as a spiritual fraternity rather than an 
organic tissue of vitally coordinated hu- 
man cells. The bond of one is metaphysi- 
cal ; of the other, phj^sical. 

In the various controversies which have 
arisen among the several schools of ethics, 
there are two questions which possess 
general philosophic interest. One is the 
question concerning the freedom of the 
will; the other, concerning the relation 
of the ethical consciousness to the su- 
preme Being of the universe. 

Freedom of the Will. — The problem of 
the freedom of the will has given rise 
to two opposed schools of thought, known 
as the determinists and the indetermi- 
nists. The former hold that the will in 
any seeming choice is determined by pre- 
ceding psychical states as antecedents. 
The mechanical sequences of the physi- 
cal world find analogous relations in the 



THE PROBLEM OP CONSCIENCE 153 

mental world. Volition is held to be 
the result of motives which determine 
the course of action, both as to its nature 
and direction. 

The indeterminist, on the other hand, 
contends that man has the consciousness 
of initiating action, and this, often in the 
face of opposing desires which are resisted 
and dominated; moreover, that the motive 
cannot be said to determine the self, the 
Ego, for the motive is merely the Ego in 
the act of desiring, and should not be 
considered as a separate force centre by 
which the Ego is affected. 

The Kantian explanation of the point 
at issue in this protracted controversy 
between determinists and indeterminists 
consists of two propositions : the first will 
recommend itself at once to the man of 
common sense; the second perhaps will 
be appreciated only by the idealist of an 
ultra type. The former is, that man feels 
himself to be a responsible creature under 
a law of obligation, but that this feeling of 
responsibility can have significance only 
upon the supposition that the will is free. 



154 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

The second part of the explanation is 
more metaphysical. Kant draws the dis- 
tinction between the so-called phenomenal 
and noumenal aspects of the self, the Ego ; 
that is, the mental phenomena, as feeling, 
desire, or volition, as they are discerned 
by us, seem to form a causal series sub- 
ject to the law of an invariable sequence, 
but the real nature behind this phenome- 
nal appearance, if adequately cognized, 
would disclose the real initiating power 
of the Ego. This explanation implies a 
self which is other than the sum of our 
conscious states. While every psychical 
state may be conceived as determined by 
previous psychical states, still, if there is 
a belief that there is a self which con- 
structs these states into a unitary whole, 
then there is room for a self-determination 
which is a real freedom of the Ego in 
willing. 

The general theory, therefore, which one 
holds concerning the nature of the Ego, 
will largely determine his special view 
regarding the freedom of the will; the 
materialist will naturally deny the possi- 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 155 

bility of such a freedom, and the pan- 
theist will acknowledge only a seeming 
freedom whose reality is illusive. 

Ethics and the Theistic Problem, — There 
is still the further problem to consider, 
whether in the moral consciousness there 
are intimations of the Divine Being. 
Such intimations are explicit in the writ- 
ings of the intuitional and transcen- 
dental schools. The former affirms that 
in man's constitutional consciousness of a 
right for right's sake, of a law of duty com- 
manding obedience, and of a responsive 
feeling of obligation, we find abundant 
evidence of a God ; as Browning has said, 

" The truth in God's breast 
Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed." 

The relation between man and God is 
further explained by the transcendentalist 
who insists that the individual conscious- 
ness is merely a manifestation of the 
universal consciousness. Thus God is 
reached through an apotheosis of man. 
The intuitionalist saves the autonomy of 
man by affirming that a relation exists 



156 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

between God and man so that there is 
mirrored in the consciousness of man the 
divine attributes as the ethical ideal, and 
yet at the same time man's individuality 
is not absorbed in the Absolute All. 

In the systems of naturalism, that is, 
utilitarianism and utilitarian evolution, 
we find a theory of the origin of the ethi- 
cal consciousness which seems to leave no 
place for, and to express no need of, a 
supreme Being. But, in whatever way 
the process of development may be ex- 
plained without a supplementary hypothe- 
sis of a theistic character, nevertheless the 
inquiry forces itself upon our considera- 
tion concerning the end which this proc- 
ess is destined to attain; and this will 
lead to a profounder speculation, which 
may discern in the progress of evolution, 

" One God, one law, one element 
And one far-off divine event 
To which the whole creation moves.'* 

Dr. Martineau has most graphically in- 
dicated the implied presence of God in 
the ethical concepts which may seem to 
be constructed upon other lines: "With 



THE PROBLEM OF CONSCIENCE 157 

a noble inconsistency, all the great writ- 
ers, whose doctrine we have studied, 
betray the tenacious vitality of the intui- 
tive consciousness of duty, throughout the 
very process of cutting away its philo- 
sophic roots; and Plato, in his 'divine 
wrath ' at the tyrant flung into Tartarus ; 
Malebranche, self-extinguished in the Ab- 
solute Holiness ; Spinoza, lifted from the 
thraldom of passion into the freedom of 
Infinite Love ; Comte, on his knees before 
the image of a Perfect Humanity, are 
touching witnesses to the undying fires 
of moral faith and aspiration,"^ 

1 Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. I, p. 512. 



CHAPTER IX 

the problem of political obligation 
("political science") 

THE special psoblem which concerns 
man's political obligations is one 
which naturally grows out of a considera- 
tion of man's ethical relations in general. 
For, regarded as a moral creature, man is 
essentially a political animal, as Aristotle 
styled him. He lives, moves, and has 
his being in the society of his fellows, 
to whom he sustains manifold relations; 
whence there arise, on the one hand, vari- 
ous obligations, and, on the other, corre- 
sponding rights and prerogatives. Many 
of these relations find permanent form 
and expression in certain social institu- 
tions, such as the family, the church, or 
the state. These institutions are the ex- 
ternal manifestation of the moral progress 
of mankind, and therefore an inquiry into 

their nature and development will reveal 

158 



PROBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 159 

the fundamental principles of social ethics. 
This is especially true of the study of 
those social relations which centre in the 
state. The chief functions of the state 
seem to relate to law and to policy. 
Through law the sovereign power enjoins 
certain actions and prohibits others; 
through policy, on the other hand, wise 
measures of government are conceived 
which tend to conserve the public health 
and safety, and, at the same time, to as- 
sure substantial progress. Public policy 
is essentially practical; it has to do with 
questions of ways and means. It is an 
art rather than a science. It is therefore 
to the rise and growth of law that we 
naturally turn in order to discover funda- 
mental principles of general philosophical 
import. 

We find that jurisprudence, which is 
the science of law, is closely related to 
ethics, and yet distinctly differentiated. 
The law commands obedience in respect 
to the outer act alone. Such obedience 
may be enforced even when the inner 
spirit secretly rebels, or openly protests. 



160 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

In ethics, however, that inner disposition 
which manifests itself in respect for the 
ethical ideal is all essential, and this the 
legal command is not able to affect. The 
philosophy of law is concerned with the 
question, why certain external acts come 
to be enforced by a sovereign power in a 
tribe, in a community, or in a state. In 
this general question, there seem to be im- 
plied three special questions possessing 
some philosophical interest. These special 
questions concern the origin of law, the 
warrant of sovereignty, and the province 
of the state's control. 

The Origin of Law. — As to the origin 
of law, we find two conflicting theories; 
one insisting upon an a priori^ and the 
other upon an empirical source. A like 
distinction holds here which we found to 
be of such fundamental significance in the 
discussion concerning the origin of the 
ethical concept. This similarity is not a 
mere coincidence, however^ for, while 
the ethical concept refers to obligation in 
its general aspect, and the legal concept 
to obligation of a specific kind, it is, 



PROBLEM OF PCLITICAL OBLIGATION 161 

nevertheless, the philosophy of obligation, 
which is the object of inquiry in each. 
That which is conceived as the ground 
of the moral concept will determine one's 
conviction to a great extent concerning 
the ground of the legal concept. He who 
is convinced that the ethical concept has 
an a 'priori basis, will naturally hold a 
similar view in reference to that particu- 
lar phase of the ethical concept which 
relates to obligations which have become 
definitely formulated in the law of the 
land. On the other hand, a belief in the 
empirical origin of duty will lead to a 
belief in the empirical origin of law. We 
know that in the developing social life, 
certain customs, mores^ have become mor- 
als, that is, they are regarded as obligatory 
upon all and receive a certain social sanc- 
tion; in a like manner certain customs 
also come to be regarded as of such vital 
import to the preservation and welfare of 
society as to associate with them certain 
coercive measures, having the force of a 
legal sanction. As in ethics, so in juris- 
prudence, a fundamental inquiry takes us 



162 THE PJaOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

back to tliese original customs, and the 
question concerning them is whether they 
can be traced to an a 'priori or an empirical 
source. 

The a priori origin of law is designated 
by a time-honored phrase, the law of 
nature^ or ju% naturale^ to use the law 
language of the Romans. The empirical 
origin of law is indicated by the phrase, 
positive law^ or jus civile. The law of 
nature implies an ideal of right, or law as 
it ought to be; positive law refers solely 
to law as it is. The ideal and the actual 
are here opposed, and it is the same situa- 
tion precisely which we met in the dis- 
cussion as to whether ethics is the science 
of that which is, or of that which ought to 
be. The idea of a law of nature as the 
ground of all positive law may be best 
indicated perhaps by the two following 
quotations, — the first from an old Roman 
lawyer and the second from a German 
philosopher of modern times. Cicero says 
that the law of nature is "the highest 
reason implanted in nature, which com- 
mands those things which ought to be 



PROBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 163 

done, and prohibits those which ought not 
to be."^ And Kant, in the same vein, has 
remarked: " What the law in any instance 
is, the jurisconsult can easily tell, but 
whether it is Right or Just that it should 
be so, is what he wants a criterion to de- 
termine. But this criterion can only then 
be found when, abandoning all a posteriori 
principles, he ascends to the sources of 
reason, and discovers on what all legisla- 
tion whatsoever can alone be based; in 
which analysis positive law is doubtless a 
great help and guide. But laws founded 
singly on experience are like the mask in 
the fable — beautiful but hollow.''- 

In this theory of an original law of nat- 
ure there is a combination of Greek and 
Roman elements. The Greek contribution 
to this idea was the ancient concept of the 
order and regularity of physical nature, 
which was afterwards extended so as to 
embrace the moral nature as well. The 
Roman contribution was the idea of order 
and uniformity which had been observed 

1 De Legihus, I. 6. 

2 Metaphysics of Ethics, p. 178, 



164 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

among the various customs of different 
races, and wMch. seemed to indicate a 
common origin in those principles which 
are grounded in a common human nature. 
In the Roman Jurisprudence, there was 
one law for the Roman citizen, the jus 
civile^ and another, the jus gentium^ for the 
alien who might appear as litigant in 
the Roman courts. The jus gentium was 
the natural result of the existing condi- 
tions of Roman politj'^, for the rights and 
prerogatives of the citizen did not per- 
tain to the foreigner, and therefore there 
arose a system of legal decisions in the 
form of Praetorian edicts, which were 
based upon the principles common to 
the various legal codes of the surround- 
ing peoples. This gave a mass of legal 
principles which were founded upon com- 
mon customs, and which, because largely 
void of local and temporal coloring, were 
regarded as quite independent of any 
particular experience, and, therefore, as 
possessing the character of natural laws. 
In these edicts we find the first model of 
courts of equity. The original meaning 



PBOBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 165 

of the term, equity, was that of a " level- 
ling^' process, or tlie reduction of the 
rights of man in general to a common 
basis of human nature. Hence the phrase, 
the rights of man, was early associated 
with that other watchword of the a 'priori 
school, the law of nature. These ideas 
have been made the basis for a philosophy 
of law from the time of the early Greek 
philosophy to the present; among the 
chief representatives of this school of po- 
litical thought we find the Stoics, Cicero, 
Grotius, Trendelenburg, and Kant. 

The idea of the law of nature appeared, 
however, in a distorted form in the writ- 
ings of Hobbes, Rousseau, and the political 
philosophers of the French Revolution. 
The old formula was construed as indicat- 
ing an original state of nature where an 
unrestrained liberty of the individual pre- 
vailed, and where each man did that which 
was right in his own eyes. Instead of an 
ideal principle of right and of liberty there 
was substituted a materialistic conception 
of a primitive society whose members were 
engaged in a struggle for existence under 



166 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

the impulse of unbridled desire, and of a 
license which had not yet known the 
meaning of law. The later German phi- 
losophers, as Kant, Hegel, Ahrens, Krause, 
and in England Prof. T. H. Green, have 
grounded the law of nature upon a more 
philosophical foundation in insisting upon 
the fundamental conception of personality 
as the source of all so-called natural rights. 
Man, as a person, is to be regarded not 
merely as a self-seeking individual, but 
as a member of a society of organically 
related persons, so that true self-realiza- 
tion is to be attained only through a self- 
sacrificing ministration to the general weal 
of the social organism. Natural rights, 
therefore, imply and necessitate corre- 
sponding duties, so coordinated that the 
good of each may redound to the good of 
all. The right which one may urge as 
truly inalienable is the right to realize 
oneself without let or hindrance in the 
performance of duties which deVolve upon 
man as a participant in the communal life 
of a tribe or of a nation. This is a right 
which can be maintained not as against 



PEOBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 167 

the social organism, but as making for its 
highest interests and welfare, as well as 
for the welfare and interests of the indi- 
yidnal himself. 

The exclusively empirical origin of law, 
on the other hand, has been stoutly urged. 
This theory, as might naturally have been 
expected, has received most enthusiastic 
support from the representatives of utili- 
tarianism, Hobbes, feentham, and Mill. It 
was Hume who first applied the doctrine 
of utilitarianism to a theory of political 
science. Moreover, the eminent jurist, 
Austin, a pronounced follower of Ben- 
tham, has based his system of juris- 
prudence upon utilitarian principles. 
From this point of view, law is regarded 
solely as the result of a wide experience 
concerning those customs which have 
proved conducive to the general good 
of past races, tribes, and nations. The 
prince of utilitarians is Macchiavelli who 
would not only sacrifice moral principles, 
but would even ignore the actually exist- 
ing laws, if only the interests of the state 
might be conserved. His theory is utili- 



168 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

tarianism pushed to the extreme; just as 
the doctrine of natural rights in the days 
of the French Revolution was the extreme 
and distorted form of the theory of natural 
law. Of Macchiavelli and his theory we 
have the following estimate by Bluntschli: 
"He has adorned an immoral and unjust 
policy, has put prudent counsel at the dis- 
posal of tyranny, and has thus helped to 
corrupt the political practice of the last 
three centuries."^ It should, however, 
be conceded that utilitarian considerations 
must necessarily prove operative in ques- 
tions of governmental policy, in legislation, 
and in all agitation and discussion con- 
cerning public affairs. In this respect 
political ethics differ from individual 
ethics, inasmuch as the individual ethic 
concerns the inner disposition, while the 
political ethic concerns necessarily the 
outer acts which can be enjoined or pro- 
hibited. Now the point of view of 
utilitarianism is such that the outer act 
and its consequences seem all important ; 

1 The Theory of the State, Eng. Trans., p. 62. 



PROBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 169 

the natural affinity, therefore, between 
political ethics and utilitarian considera- 
tions is evident. It is very strenuously 
urged, however, by those who favor some 
a priori foundation of legal principles, 
that utilitarianism without a check will 
run into wild Macchiavellianism, and that 
it needs precisely that conservative control 
which the idea of a natural law of right 
and of justice supplies. 

It would be surprising, indeed, if there 
were not an application of the theorj^ of 
evolution to the problem of the rise and 
growth of the legal concept, a theory cor- 
responding in the main to the general 
theory of evolution as regards the ethical 
concept. Not only is there such a theory 
in fact, but it is forging more and more to 
the front, and proclaiming its doctrines 
with vigor and insistence. The evolu- 
tionist contends that states are not made, 
but grow, and that the law like language 
is the result of a gradual development. In 
this school, there are, on the one hand, those 
who emphasize the physical factors in this 
evolution, such as climate, geographical 



170 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

position, soil, water-ways, etc., and on the 
other hand, there are those who lay stress 
upon the mental factors, such as M. Fouillee 
styles " idea forces," ^ and insist that they 
are all potent in modifying and determin- 
ing the physical surroundings. The one 
is the evolution of naturalism, the other is 
essentially an idealistic evolution,. Per- 
haps the most eiiiinent representative of 
naturalistic evolution is Montesquieu, while 
Hegel valiantly defends a purely idealistic 
evolution, and contends that in the state 
institutions generally and in the law of 
the state particularly there is the external 
manifestation of the universal conscious- 
ness, which through the ages is thus 
gradually objectifying itself. The modern 
historical method of inquiry takes account 
both of the naturalistic and idealistic 
forces in the evolution of law. It is an 
inductive study of law as it is, and as it 
has been, in order to discover certain 
universal laws of tendency in the consti- 
tutions and codes of states. The founders 

1 Fouillee, La Psychologie des idees forces. 



PEOBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 171 

of the so-called historical school of jurists, 
Savigny and Puchta, emphasize the " idea 
forces " in the evolution of law, which they 
conceive as the gradual manifestation of 
the common consciousness of a people as it 
is disclosed in the detailed study of the 
comparative history of nations. In this 
connection, it is to be observed that the 
historical ^nethod is not necessarily at 
variance with an a 'priori basis of the idea 
of right and of liberty. Concerning this 
Bluntschli has said that "the old strife 
between these two methods has altogether 
ceased in Germany. Peace was made as 
early as 1840. Since then it is recognized 
on all sides that the experiences and 
phenomena of history must be illumined 
with the light of ideas, and that specula- 
tion is childish if it does not consider the 
real conditions of the nation's life." ^ 

The Giround of Sovereignty. — There 
is a second question of general philo- 
sophical interest, concerning the warrant 
of sovereignty. Austin defines a sover- 

1 The Theory of the State, p. 70. 



172 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

eign power as that "whicli is not in a 
habit of obedience to any determinate 
human superior, while it is itself the deter- 
minate and common superior to which the 
bulk of a subject society is in the habit of 
obedience."^ By virtue of what authority 
can a portion of society compel obedience 
to its commands, while acknowledging no 
obedience to any power whatsoever ? To 
this question there are several answers. 
The first is the theological view, that 
sovereign power has been delegated to the 
state by divine investiture. This idea 
was very vigorously challenged by the 
champions of the church prerogative. 
Thomas Aquinas, for example, contended 
that the state must be subordinated to the 
church, inasmuch as the church is the only 
institution which is divinely ordained. 
Dante coordinated the two powers, while 
Macchiavelli insisted upon the state's com- 
plete independence of the church. The 
writers of the Reformation period, more- 
over, declared that the state was divinely 

^ Jurisprudence^ I, p. 171. 



]^ROBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 173 

ordained, and that without the interven- 
tion of church dispensation. Two points 
seem to be pretty definitely settled: one 
is the entire organic independence of 
church and state, and the second is that 
sovereignty has not been a direct commis- 
sion of the divine will. The latter is 
thoroughly compatible, however, with a 
theory of an indirect revelation of God's 
will to man in the constitution of human 
nature, and in the progressive experiences 
of mankind, so that in this sense the will 
of God may be regarded as the primal 
source of law, and, as such, the warrant for 
sovereign control. 

Another theory traces sovereignty to 
might, pure and simple. Might is right, 
it is urged ; and, therefore, there is no 
occasion for power to explain its own 
existence. This was substantially the 
theory of Spinoza, who identified jus na- 
turae with potentia naturae^ and insisted 
that the only thing which a state had no 
right to do was that which might in any 
respect lessen its power. The so-called 
analytical school of jurists, as Austin, 



174 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

Holland, and Pollock, insist upon a like 
interpretation of the warrant of sover- 
eignty. They hold, that after a careful 
analysis of positive law, the one essential 
idea which is revealed as an ultimate legal 
element, is the idea of a power which can 
compel obedience, and which can create 
in the social organism what Bagehot calls a 
"legal fibre." ^ The position of the ana- 
lytical school has been criticised by the 
historical school of jurists generally, and 
in particular by Sir Henry Sumner Maine, 
who insists that by a mere process of 
abstraction the legal analysts reach a 
naked sovereignty stripped of all its co- 
ordinate attributes which are essential to 
the very integrity of the concept itself. 
He says of them that " they neglect the 
vast mass of influences which we may call, 
for shortness, moral, and which perpetually 
shapes, limits, or forbids the actual direc- 
tion of the forces of society by its 
sovereign. . • . Just as it is possible to 
forget the existence of friction in nature, 

I 1 Bagehot, Physics and Politics^ p. 30. 



PBOBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 175 

and the reality of other motives in society 
except the desire to grow rich, so the 
pupil of Austin may be tempted to forget 
that there is more in actual sovereignty 
than force, and more in laws which are 
commands of sovereigns than can be got 
out of them by merely considering them 
as regulated force. ... A despot with a 
disturbed brain is the sole conceivable 
example of such sovereignty."^ 

Still another account of the warrant of 
sovereignty is that of the social-contract 
theory, which has been so vigorously set 
forth in the writings of Hobbes and of 
Locke, and so brilliantly expounded in the 
impassioned utterances of Rousseau. This 
theory regards each individual as the pos- 
sessor of inalienable rights, which he alone 
can delegate to another, and which no one 
may wrest from him. It is furthermore 
held that among primitive men, there was 
a recognition of the fact that individuals 
could live peaceably and harmoniously 
together in a clan, or tribe, only by making 

1 Maine, Early History of Institutions^ pp. 359-361. 



176 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

common concessions of the nature of a so- 
cial contract whereby, on the one hand, cer- 
tain rights of the individual would be freely- 
surrendered, and, on the other, society as 
a whole would be obligated to guarantee 
the general good of all. The criticism of 
this theory is that it is not historical, inas- 
much as the state has been a growth by 
imperceptible degrees, and not artificially 
founded by any formal contract. More- 
over, this theory implies that man has 
existed with certain rights outside a 
society of his fellows, whereas by nature 
man is born into a plexus of social rela- 
tions and cannot be rightly conceived as 
not possessing any such relations at all. 
The social-contract theory led to the idea 
of popular sovereignty which regarded 
law as an expression of the general will, 
and therefore as a corollary to this theory 
it was contended that the people had a 
right to destroy the sovereignty and annul 
the original contract, whenever the popular 
will might be consistently and constantly 
frustrated. This was the philosophy of 
the French Revolution. Here again the 



PROBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 177 

German philosophy goes deeper than the 
French, for, while regarding the general 
will as the basis of sovereignty, it insists 
that such a basis does not itself rest upon 
any artificial contract but upon the soli- 
darity which characterizes the common con- 
sciousness of man. This forms a natural 
foundation, and its expression in sovereign 
law is a natural manifestation. In accord 
with this latter view. Professor Green bases 
sovereign right upon the necessity of 
preserving the integrity both of the in- 
dividual and the social personality. He 
says : '' The claim or the right of the 
individual to have certain powers secured 
to him by society, and the counter-claim 
of society to exercise certain powers over 
the individual, alike rest on the fact that 
these powers are necessary to the fulfil- 
ment of man's vocation as a moral being, 
to an effectual self-devotion to the work 
of developing the perfect character in 
himself and others."^ 

The Province of State Control. — The 

1 Green, Works, Vol. II, p. 347. 

N 



178 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

third general question concerns the scope 
of the state's control. There are two op- 
posed theories : one of ancient Greek ori- 
gin, which emphasizes the prerogatives and 
power of the state, and the other, which re- 
flects the eighteenth century spirit in insist- 
ing upon the rights of the individual as 
against the sovereignty of the state. It is 
social atomism opposed to the social organ- 
ism. The theory of individualism in its 
extreme form leads to anarchy, which is 
the reduction of governmental functions 
to zero ; the theory which magnifies the 
society at the expense of the individual, 
leads logically to socialism, which insists 
that society is to take charge of the in- 
dividual and is itself to determine how 
he shall be trained, what he is fitted to 
undertake, and what he has earned by his 
effort. 

As to the end of government there are 
two tendencies to be noted : one material- 
istic, which regards the sole function of 
government to be the maintenance of or- 
der and the repression of crime, and the 
other, which is idealistic, takes into ac- 



PROBLEM OF POLITICAL OBLIGATION 179 

count the ideas of humanity, as religion, 
science, and art. Is there a place for the 
so-called Kulturstaatf Should the state 
by enactment attempt to be the guardian 
of culture ? Many who feel the yoke of 
government are clamorous for a laissez 
faire policy, less legislation, less govern- 
mental interference , let the laws of supply 
and demand, of competition, of invention, 
and of imitation, work out the salvation of 
the race. On the other hand it is urged 
that the state must take active measures 
to promote the public welfare both directly 
and indirectly. Compulsory education, for 
instance, only indirectly affects the public 
weal, and yet it is maintained that it is es- 
sential to public health and public safety. 
The mean may perhaps be attained by 
striving in all legislation to preserve the 
personality of each individual regarded as 
a contributor to the general good; and 
this, in two respects, to provide for the 
full exercise and development of each per- 
sonality without over-restraint, and yet, on 
the other hand, to avoid dispensing that 
kind of help which diminishes self-respect 



180 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

and paralyzes effort. The idea of a pater- 
nal goyernment implies that its members 
fail to possess those elements of personality 
which constitute a vigorous manhood, and 
give power and prestige to the state which 
is able to develop them. Here again we 
see that the idea of a personality which is 
not merely individual, but also social, rec- 
onciles the two conflicting ideas of social- 
ism and individualism under one concept. 



CHAPTER X 

THE PEOBLEM OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 
(" ESTHETICS ") 

IN the sphere of aesthetics there are sev- 
eral problems of general philosophical 
interest. The term cestheties is one which 
was first used by Baumgarten in his u^s- 
thetica^ published in 1750. The word is 
derived from the Greek, aiaOdvofiai, to 
perceive through the senses; hence from 
its derivation it means a study of the sen- 
sibilities ; not, however, of the sensibilities 
in general, but only of those feelings which 
are accompanied by appreciation of the 
beautiful either in nature or in art. The 
question at once suggests itself, " What is 
the beautiful? " To define beauty in clear 
and adequate terms is indeed a most diffi- 
cult task. There is so great a diversity 
of opinion as to the essentials of beauty 
that the matter of simple definition is the 

first and perhaps the most serious problem 

181 



182 THE PROBLEMS OE PHILOSOPHY 

wMch the philosophy of aesthetics pre- 
sents. The difficulty lies in the fact that 
the consciousness of beauty is so simple 
and so common an experience as to baffle 
all attempts to analyze the resulting con- 
cept into any simpler elements. A con- 
cept which is framed from cognitive or 
intellectual elements is naturally more defi- 
nite and clean cut than a concept composed 
of emotional elements. Goethe, with a 
poet's sensitive appreciation of the fugitive 
nature of our feelings, has expressed the 
conviction that " beauty is inexplicable, it 
is a hovering and glittering shadow, whose 
outline eludes the grasp of a definition." 

Another difficulty in reference to the 
concept of beauty confronts us when we 
attempt to define the sphere in which 
beauty can be said essentially to reside. 
Is beauty a subjective state, a pleasurable 
feeling merely which objects produce in 
consciousness ? or is beauty inherent as 
well in the objects themselves, so that the 
experienced pleasure within may be re- 
garded as a reflection of the indwelling 
beauty without? In the latter case the 



PEOBLEM OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 183 

final judgment concerning the beautiful 
must be regarded as the resultant of the 
qualities of the object observed, and of the 
reactive sensibility of the observer. It 
will be readily recognized that the funda- 
mental problem in the theory of knowledge 
emerges here in the sphere of aesthetics, 
namely, the relation of that which is within 
consciousness to reality. Amidst these 
many difficulties there seems to be one 
characteristic of beauty, the truth of which 
we may assume without further discussion ; 
that the consciousness of the beautiful is 
always a judgment of valuation. Associ- 
ated with the idea of the beautiful there is 
always the idea of worth or of appreciation. 
This places the aesthetic judgment in the 
same class with the moral and logical judg- 
ments. All three recognize a certain ideal 
with which the concrete experience in each 
case is compared, and a resulting evalua- 
tion of the experience constitutes the judg- 
ment of morals, or of reason, or of taste. 

"Beauty, Good, and Knowledge are three sisters 
That dote upon each other, friends to man, 
Living together under the same roof. 
And never can be sundered without tears." 



184 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

The aesthetical ideal cannot be for- 
mulated; but that it possesses a certain 
constant and universal element receives 
convincing testimony from a general con- 
sensus of taste which is evidenced in the 
universal appreciation of certain forms of 
beauty, both in nature and in art. It 
must be acknowledged, to be sure, that 
there is an indefinite variety in taste ; but 
in the midst of the bewildering chaos of 
conflicting appreciations there has formed 
a recognized ideal which in art we call 
classic. It is universally recognized, if 
not in detail, at least in the broad lines of 
its imperious commands. 

This ideal may be regarded merely as a 
psychical phenomenon, the combined re- 
sult of environment and of the schooling 
of the general taste through certain initial 
customs of criticism which originally set 
the drift in some one general direction. 
On the other hand, it may be urged that 
there is a metaphysical foundation under- 
lying such an ideal in the sense of there 
being in nature manifestations of an abso- 
lute beauty, which accounts for its univer- 



PROBLEM OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 185 

sal appreciation. It is to be noted in this 
connection that there is more substantial 
agreement concerning the beautiful in 
nature than the beautiful in art. The 
problem here is similar to that which was 
found so perplexing in the sphere of ethics, 
as to whether there is absolute, or only- 
relative value in the ideal and the canons 
therein prescribed. 

There is a further problem of aesthetics 
which is one of interest because of its bear- 
ings upon the more general problems of 
philosophy. It is this : "Does the aesthetic 
judgment, the appreciative consciousness, 
reveal a truer and deeper knowledge of 
nature than do the intellectual and moral 
judgments ? " It is held that under quick- 
ened aesthetical sensibility we become con- 
scious in a mystical manner of the spirit 
of nature which breathes and lives through 
all things ; that especially the poets, in 
moments of rapt ecstasy, see visions and 
dream dreams which illumine the mystery 
of existence and withdraw apace the veil 
which conceals the vast unknown. Kant 
found in the sesthetical judgment a solu- 



186 THE PEOBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

tion of the difficulties connected with the 
judgments of Pure Reason and the judg- 
ments of Practical Reason. For while 
the former are purely of intellectual origin 
and the latter compose that mass of moral 
truths which stand as law to the will, yet 
neitlier through the intellect nor through 
the will do we come to know the reality 
which underlies the phenomena of experi- 
ence. Kant insists, therefore, that we are 
able to apprehend the real nature of the 
world of perception only through a bond 
of sympathy which is felt to exist between 
reality and our own souls in the apprecia- 
tion of the beautiful ; and that, therefore, 
our aesthetic judgments possess an element 
of universality, because they are the recog- 
nition of the universal reason in nature. 
This thought Matthew Arnold has ex- 
pressed in substance where he asserts that 
"to see things in their beauty is to see 
things in their truth." 

Closely akin to the appreciation of 
beauty is the recognition of the teleologi- 
cal or the purposeful in nature. It is an 
intuition of the order and harmony of the 



PROBLEM OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 187 

world, not only as beautiful, but as dis- 
closing a profound plan and a vast de- 
sign. The aesthetic sense, therefore, has 
that poetic, and likewise prophetic, insight 
which doubts not through the ages one in- 
creasing purpose runs. The mind that is 
keenly sensible of the existence and the 
import of ideals has more than a lively 
appreciation of their worth ; such a mind 
can enter into the creative mind of the 
universe to the extent that it becomes 
itself creative, and in the various forms 
of art gives expression to that which 
is seen in waking dreams, and which is 
the '' spirit and finer sense of all knowl- 
edge." Kant defines genius as the intel- 
ligence which works like nature. And 
according to Schelling the Absolute re- 
veals Himself in the artist's creative work, 
disclosing the secrets of nature and the 
innermost nature of reality. It is thus 
by the sesthetic insight that man pene- 
trates the surface show of phenomena, and 
discovers their essential significance in the 
spirit of reason, which, as beauty and pur- 
pose, is manifested in them. While this 



188 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

is substantially the conception of one of 
the most prevalent forms of modern ideal- 
ism, it is a thought which is of ancient and 
honorable lineage ; it may be traced to an 
early Greek origin. It is essentially Pla- 
tonic ; it finds expression also in the writ- 
ings of Plotinus, who was imbued with 
Platonic ideas, and who regarded all beauty 
as the outshining of the inner spirit through 
the imprisoning shell of external matter. 

In this connection, Hegel's conception 
of art must not be overlooked. He re- 
gards art as the triumph of mind over 
matter, because it impresses upon the phe- 
nomenal a " reality which is born of mind." 
While the living idea is thus embodied 
through sensuous media and forms, still all 
forms of art do not embody the idea in an 
equal degree of perfection. In architect- 
ure there is a dualism between mind and 
matter, inasmuch as the material does not 
satisfactorily express the idea but is rather 
a symbol which stands for the idea. In 
sculpture the idea is more adequately ex- 
pressed through the material mediumo It 
however is inferior to painting in this re- 



PROBLEM OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 189 

spect, because the soul of thought glances 
in the eye which in the statue is ever cold 
and inert. Music, being more subjective, 
is therefore more expressive of the inner 
moods and feelings. Poetry, however, is 
the art of arts ; for the idea finds its most 
complete expression in words, and the ma- 
terial as vehicle of the thought is most 
thoroughly subordinate to the idea. In 
poetry, moreover, the blending of form and 
thought realizes an ideal synthesis of the 
subjective and objective. Throughout He- 
gel's conception of art, as thus outlined, it 
will be seen, therefore, that there is a crea- 
tive function of the idea which produces 
the beauty of thought in a medium which 
is originally without form and void. 

The aesthetical concept is regarded by 
Lotze, also, as a solvent of the difiiculties 
which complicate the epistemological prob- 
lem. He holds that reality is manifested 
in three ways, — as universal laws to which 
the real in its various aspects is necessarily 
subject ; and as the real substances and 
forces which are the material content of 
things ; and again as a plan according to 



190 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

which, the manifold elements of the real are 
brought together in such a manner as to 
realize a specific end or idea. Lotze's con- 
tention is, that reason and conscience fail 
to discern that these three moments of 
reality are connected through any underly- 
ing unity, but that the cognizance of beauty 
pledges the existence of such a unity, 
dimly felt and vaguely conceived, yet sat- 
isfactory withal. Lotze's definition of 
beauty, therefore, is "the appearance to 
immediate intuition of a unity amongst 
those three powers (law, matter, and idea), 
which our cognition is unable completely 
to unite." ^ 

■- There is still a further question of gene- 
ral interest, — the relation of aesthetics to 
ethics. There is a tendency among cer- 
tain writers to identify the good and the 
beautiful. The ethical systems of Shaftes- 
bury and Hutcheson are representative in 
an eminent degree of this general doctrine. 
This would be naturally expected and 
readily inferred from their appeal to a 
moral sense which is closely akin to the 
1 Outlines of ^Esthetics, p. 11. 



PKOBLEM OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 191 

sesthetic sense, as the source whence all 
knowledge of moral distinctions emanates. 
Evil conduct thus proceeds from a deficient 
or abnormal taste, while right conduct is 
good taste. Schiller, with a half poetic 
and a half philosophic insight, has laid 
special stress upon the practical influence 
of aesthetic ideals upon the evolution of 
ethical concepts and conduct. He con- 
tends that man through contact with the 
beautiful is always infused with its re- 
fining spirit to the extent that he is thereby- 
rendered less susceptible to the allurements 
of evil, and thus the will and desire are 
brought into harmony. Schopenhauer, who 
finds the essence of evil in the unrestrained 
strivings of the will, suggests that in the 
intuition of the beautiful, there is a benign 
influence which calms the fever of the will, 
and restores a normal self-poise. The 
ideal, according to Schiller, is the ScJione 
Seele^ the " beautiful soul," which experi- 
ences no internal struggle between the 
behests of duty and the promptings of in- 
clination, but in which the "play im- 
pulse," that exuberance of vitality, and 



192 THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 

overflow of spirit, instinctively realizes 
itself in the sphere of the good rather 
than the evil. It is the same idea which 
Wordsworth has expressed in his " Ode 
to Duty": — 

" Serene will be our days and bright, 
And happy will our nature be, 
When love is an unerring light 
And joy its own security." 

There is here a tempering of the harsh 
rigorism of Kant, who insists that the 
very essence of morality lies in the inner 
struggle, the strenuous battling of the 
higher with the lower in our natures. 
The Kantian idea, however, must not be 
wholly overlooked in one's enthusiasm to 
construct an ethic along the lines of least 
resistance ; for often through sensuous 
struggle a freedom of spirit is wrought. 
The idea of the aesthetic impulse towards 
the good is most suggestive if it be not 
constrained to embrace the whole range of 
ethical experience. It may be of some in- 
terest to trace this idea also to that ancient 
source, to which modern thought is under 



(4 C 



PROBLEM OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 193 

such obligation, and to find in Plato its 
most impressive expression : — 

" ' Right speech, then, and Tightness of 
harmony and form and rhythm minister to 
goodness of nature •, not that good-nature 
which we so call with a soft name, being 
really silliness, but the frame of mind 
which in very truth is rightly and fairly 
ordered in regard to the moral habit.' 
Most certainly,' he said. 
Must not these qualities, then, be 
everywhere pursued by the young men if 
they are to do each his own business ? ' 

"'Pursued, certainly.' 

" ' Now painting, I suppose, is full of 
them [those qualities which are partly 
ethical, partly aesthetic], and all handicraft 
such as that ; the weaver's art is full of 
them, and the inlayer's art, and the build- 
ing of houses, and the working of all the 
other apparatus of life ; moreover the nat- 
ure of our own bodies, and of all other 
living things. For in all these, rightness 
or wrongness of form is inherent. And 
wrongness of form, and the lack of rhythm, 
the lack of harmony are fraternal to f aulti- 



194 THE Problems of philosophy 

ness of mind and character ; and the op- 
posite qualities to the opposite condition, 
the temperate and good character : frater- 
nal, aye! and copies of them.' 

" ' Yes, entirely so,' he said, 

" ' Must our poets, then, alone be under 
control, and compelled to work the image 
of the good into their poetic works, or not 
to work among us at all ; or must the 
other craftsmen too be controlled and re- 
strained from working this faultiness, and 
intemperance, and illiberality, and form- 
lessness of character, whether into the 
image of living creatures, or the houses 
they build, or any other product of their 
craft whatever ; or must he, who is unable 
so to do, be forbidden to practise his art 
among us, to the end that our guardians 
may not, nurtured in the images of vice as 
in a vicious pasture, cropping and culling 
much every day, little by little from many 
sources, composing together some one 
great evil in their own souls, go unde- 
tected ? Must we not rather seek for those^ 
craftsmen who have the power, by way of 
their own natural virtue, to track out the 



PROBLEM OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 195 

nature of the beautiful and seemly, to the 
end that, living as in some wholesome 
place, the young men may receive good 
from every side, whencesoever, from fair 
works of art, either upon sight or upon 
hearing, anything may strike, as it were a 
breeze bearing health from kindly places, 
and from childhood straightway bring 
them unaware to likeness and friendship 
and harmony with fair reason ? ' " i 

This passage has been quoted at length 
because it strikingly illustrates the old 
Greek virtue of Kokoica^aOia^ that aesthetic 
impulse towards the good, and because 
this idea has reappeared in so many forms 
in philosophy and in poetry alike. It 
appeals to the mind of the poet especially 
because there is a mystical element which 
characterizes the process of character de- 
velopment through the transmutation of 
the beautiful into the good. In Shelley's 
" Hymn to Intellectual Beauty " there is a 
rehabilitation of the old Platonic idea in 
one of its most exquisite expressions : — 

1 Plato, Bepublic, III. 401. 



196 THE PROBLEMS OP PHILOSOPHY 

" Spirit of Beauty, * * * 
Thy light alone — like mist o'er mountaiDS 

driven, 
Or music by the night wind sent, 
Thro' strings of some still instrument, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream. 
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream, 

^a ii£, ^^ JiC JlC J^ ,^ 2l^ 

^(C Tt* * '^ *^ ^ * >P» 

Thus let thy power, which like the truth 
Of nature on my passive youth 
Descended, to my onward life supply 
Its calm — to one who worships thee, 
And every form containing thee. 
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 
To fear himself, and love all human kind." 

It must be observed again, however, 
that while fully recognizing the fraternal 
kinship of the good and the beautiful, 
nevertheless it does violence to the integ- 
rity of the ethical concept to derive its 
significance and force wholly from the 
aesthetic concept. 

The intimate relation between these two 
concepts may be further unfolded through 
the consideration of the common character- 
istic which they possess, in that they each 
mirror the Eternal Spirit of the universe 
through kindred though different modes 



PKOBLEM OF THE SENSE OF BEAUTY 197 

of manifestation. As Emerson says : 
" Truth and goodness and beauty are but 
different faces of the same All." It is by 
no means necessary to interpret Emerson's 
thought in a pantheistic sense. It com- 
mends itself especially to the theist. The 
intimations of divinity are revealed and 
yet half concealed in every form of beauty. 
They underlie the ancient Hebrew concep- 
tion of the worship of God in the beauty 
of holiness, the beatific vision of Dante, 
the sovereign splendor of beauty in 
Plato's hierarchy of eternal forms, and 
Goethe's characterization of nature as the 
garment of the living God. 



INDEX 



Actualists 79 f . 
iEsthetics 28, 31, 181 f . 
Ahrens 166 
Anarchy 178 
Anaxagoras 61 
Anaximander 59 
Anaximenes 60 
A posteriori 27, 97, 136, 163 
A priori 27, 97, 131 f., 136, 

1601,165 
Aquinas, Thomas 172 
Aristippus 145 
Aristophanes 1 
Aristotle 16, 78, 130, 158 
Arnold 186 
Art 181, 184, 188 f . 
Association, Theory of 89 f . 
Atheism 68 
Atomism 33 f ., 62, 63 
Austin 167, 171, 173, 175 

Bacon 2, 131 

Bagehot 174 

Balfour 10 

Baumgarten 181 

Beattie 109 

Beauty, Philosophy of 181 f . 

Begriff 120 

Bentham 146, 147, 167 

Berkeley 109 



Bluntschli 168, 171 
Browning 56, 155 
Biichner 47 
Buddha 80 
Butler 139 

Cabanis 39, 46 
Categorical imperative 140 
Causation 43 f., 131 f. 
Cicero 162, 165 
Clarke 139 
Comte 100 f., 157 
Concept 119 f . 
Conceptualism 124 f . 
Condillac 97 
Conscience 134 f . 
Consciousness 44 f., 50 
Conservation of energy 39 f . 
Cosmology 18, 20 f., 30, 

59 f. 
Critical school. The 99 
Cudworth 139 
Cumberland 139 
Cyrenaicism 145 

Dante 172, 197 
Deduction 130 f . 
Deism 22, 65, 67 
Democritus 33, 34, 35, 46, 
49, 62, 63 



199 



200 



INDEX 



Descartes 35, 93, 99 
Determinism 152 
D'Holbach 46 
Diderot 46 
Dualism 19f., 33 

Edicts, The praetorian 164 
Emerson 197 
Empedocles 60, 61 
Empiricism 26 f ., 97 1, 131 f., 

135 f., 160 f., 167 
Epicurus 63, 146 
Epistemology 24 f ., 30, 95 f ., 

132 f., 189 
Ethics 28 f., 31, 134 f., 160, 

190 f. 
Eudaemonism 148 
Evolution, The theory of 

44 f. , 136 f., 149, 156, 169 f. 

Fechner 54 

Feuerbach 39, 47, 77 

Fichte 9, 114 f . 

Flint 47 

Form of the ethical concept 

141 
Fouillee 170 
Freedom of the will 152 f . 

Geulincx 37 

Gladstone 10 

Goethe 4, 10, 68, 126, 182, 

197 
Green 91, 113, 144, 166, 177 
Grotius 165 

Haeckel 47 
Hamilton 112 
Hedonism 145 f . 



Hegel 9, 77, 114 f., 143, 166, 
170, 188 

Hegelians of the Left 77 

Helvetius 46 

Heraclitus 60 

Herbart 93, 117 

Herbert, Lord 67 

Herder 9, 115 

Historical school of juris- 
prudence 171 

History, The philosophy of 
12 

Hobbes 54, 146, 165, 167, 175 

Holland 174 

Homer 125 

Hume 86 f ., 99, 110, 167 

Hutcheson 139, 190 

Idealism 25 f., 109, 114 f., 

170, 178 
Identity, The theory of 38, 

51 f. 
Immanence, Divine 66, 71, 

74 
Indeterminism 153 f . 
Individualism 178 f . 
Induction 130 f . 
Inference 119, 128 f . 
Innate ideas 97 f . 
Intellectual intuitionalism 

139 
Intellectualism 92 ff . 
Intuitional theory of ethics 

135 f., 155 

James 83 

Judgment 119, 126 f . 
Jurisprudence 159 f . 
Jus civile 162, 164 



INDEX 



201 



Jus gentium 164 
Jus naturae 173 
Jus naturale 162 

KaKoKdiyadla 195 

Kant 81, 91, 99, 110 f., 115, 

139, 140, 141, 153, 154, 163, 

165, 166, 186, 186, 187, 

192 
Keats 1 
Kipling 7 
Knowledge, Relation of, to 

reality 101, 112 
Krause 166 

Laissez-faire policy 179 
La Mettrie 46 
Lange 46, 110 
Law, Natural 162 f . 
Law, Positive 162 
Law, The origin of 160 f . 
Law, The science of 159 f . 
Leibniz 34, 35, 36, 48, 49, 54, 

93,99 
Lessing 10, 115 
Locke 68, 95, 97, 99, 109, 

175 
Logic 28, 31, 118 f . 
Lotze 3, 94, 189, 190 

Macchiavelli 167, 168, 169, 

172 
McCosh 109 
Maine 174 
Malbranche 157 
Martineau 69, 75, 86, 139, 

156 
Materialism 38 f ., 61, 76, 77, 

154, 178 



Maurice 8 

Mechanical explanation of 

the universe 21, 63 
Metaphysics 17 f., 22, 23 
Mill 5, 99, 147, 167 
Mind 16, 78 f . 
Mind and matter 38, 49, 53 
Moleschott 47 
Monads of Leibniz 34, 49 
Monisml9f.,33, 38, 49 
Monotheism 65 
Montesquieu 170 
Morley 10 

Naturalism 169 f . 
Natural rights 175 f . 
Natura naturans 75 
Natura naturata 75 
Nature 16, 185 f . 
Neo-Spinozism 54 
Normative sciences 28 f ., 118 

Occasionalism 37 
Ontology 18 f., 22, 30, 32 f ., 

103 
Oswald 109 

Pantheism 22, 66, 68 f., 

197 
Parallelism 51 f . 
Parmenides 61 
Parsimony of causes 41 
Pater 125 
Paulsen 90 
Percept 119 
Perception 96, 102 f., 112, 

119 
Perfectionism 143 
Personality 143 f., 177, 179 f. 



202 



INDEX 



Phenomenalism 110 

Plato 5, 49, 104 f., 125, 157, 
193 f., 195, 197 

Plotinus 188 

Pluralism 33 f . 

Poetry, Relation to philoso- 
phy 6 f , 

Politics, The science of 
158 f. 

Pollock 174 

Polytheism 22, 64 f . 

Positivism 99 f . 

Potentia naturae 173 

Preestablished harmony 
36 f. 

Price 139 

Protestantism and philoso- 
phy 9 

Psychology 23 f., 29, 30, 
78 f. 

Psychology, Genetic 92 

Puchta 171 

Rationalism 27, 95 f . 
Reaction theory 35 f . 
Realism 25 f., 107 f. 
Realism, Scholastic 122 f . 
Reality 13 f., 101, 113, 121, 

123, 127, 129, 183, 186, 

189 f . 
Reason 118 f . 
Reid 109 
Relativity of knowledge 

112 
Res cogitans 35 
Res extensa 35 
Reymond, Du Bois 58 
Rigorism 140 
Robertson 8 



Romanes 55 
Rousseau 165, 176 

Savigny 171 

Schelling 9, 114 f., 126, 187 

Schiller 10, 191 

Schopenhauer 49, 94, 191 

Science, its relation to phi- 
losophy 5 

Scottish philosophy 109, 113 

Self, Nature of the 79 f., 154 

Self-realization 143 f . 

Sensationalism 97 

Sentimental intuitionalism 
139 

Seth, Andrew 113 

Shaftesbury 139, 190 

Shelley 126, 195 

Smith, Adam 139 

Social-contract, The theory 
of 175 f . 

Social factor in the ethical 
concept 151 f., 1581 

Socialism 178 f . 

Socrates 1 

Sovereignty 171 f . 

Spencer 54, 149 

Spinoza 54, 74, 93, 99, 115, 
157, 173 

Spiritualism 38, 48 f., 61 

State, The theory of the 
159 f. 

State control 177 f . 

Stephen 151 

Stewart 109 

Stoics 140, 165 

Substantialists 79 

System, The world of know- 
ledge regarded as a 129 



INDEX 



203 



Teleology 21, 72 f., 186 f. 

Tennyson 8 

Thales 2, 69 

Theism 22, 66 f., 165, 190 f. 

Transcendence, Divine 66, 

71 
Transcendental theory of 

ethicsl36f., 142f., 156 
Trendelenburg 165 

Universal relations 129 f . 
Universals, The nature of 
122 f. 



Utilitarianism 136 f., 145 f., 
156, 167 f . 

Vogt 47 
Voltaire 68 
Voluntaryism 92 f . 

Wallace 72 
Windelband 63, 124 
Wordsworth 69, 192 
World regarded as eject 55 

Xenophanes 60 



-^^ 
•^ 



^. 












■-^^- 



I-. 






< 










V '-t. 






o 



#?<^- 



-f ^ 



.^^^ 






Oo 



.^ 



'^^mj''^ \ 



.^^ "'"c.. 



-/?^?^ 



'^S 



'/- 







V a-* 







,0' ^ 



"^ 



^^^ :#» 






^^-^ 



-^^ 



WAfv^ - J>^ 



^U \\r * 






^ ■';^. 



/^' 



;j(A*|f,^°^, ''^^„,,^xv _* 



V 1 « 






vi^—za 



VVj^ ^^^ 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper | 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Ox 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2004 

PreservationTechnol( 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESEf 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 160 




LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




013 177 478 3 









>-1 











:•.. y 






< -• • A .< 



i 



..*/.cv-ii^:-'^-^ 



■:ja^?:*^/:^^^ 







•v 




